


The Spark That Lit The Flame

by LaufeiaEvans



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), M/M, everyone has kids, it's NOT MPREG MOM
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-01-29 04:14:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21404011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaufeiaEvans/pseuds/LaufeiaEvans
Summary: Loki never expected to return to Midgard, hiding from Thanos in New York with Tony Stark of all people.And Tony Stark never expected to be harboring a fugitive from another planet, least of all one who’s tried to kill most of his friends and nearly destroyed an entire city.It’s safe to say that neither of them expected cohabitation to be their next move, but at this point, they don’t exactly have a choice.Because it’s not just about them anymore.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Clint Barton, Loki/Tony Stark
Comments: 27
Kudos: 169





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewrite of a concept I've been playing with since 2013. I've scrapped the original fic, because so much has changed, but the title and general idea are still there. I'm hoping to finish, or at least make significant progress, during NaNoWriMo.
> 
> Credit where credit is due: there are several original child characters in this fic, two of whom are mine alone and one of whom comes from [this blog.](https://theavengersheadcanons.tumblr.com/tagged/Shanta) You won't need to know all that for this story, but it's a nice little tidbit. Also so many thanks to my beta/fact-checker/idea-bouncer-offer/mom friend [Katie](https://theprodigalrobot.tumblr.com/) for helping this all come together as something mildly coherent.
> 
> At the risk of rambling on, I'll get to the actual story now.

In hindsight, Bruce’s observation about Loki’s mind being a bag full of cats probably wasn’t all that far off.

By the time he escapes their custody on the Helicarrier, the best they’ve been able to discern about his grand evil plan is “steal back the Tesseract and rule the world.” Even after he’s summoned the Chitauri, the specifics are still pretty fuzzy, and every move he makes is less predictable than the last. It’s like he’s on some kind of manic power trip, racing aimlessly towards his ultimate goal with very little thought to what he’ll need to do to get there.

So it almost makes sense, in a weird, roundabout sort of way, that he would end up going off the rails and doing something completely insane on his quest for world domination.

Something like trying to seduce Tony in his own Tower.

Once he’s followed Loki back to the Tower, Tony’s plan is simple: Distract Loki, get him to let his guard down, and surprise him with the magic-canceling handcuffs he’s been building ever since he managed to get a decent set of readings on the sorcerer’s energy signature. After he escaped from SHIELD captivity, they’d figured out pretty quickly that Loki’s magic was his biggest advantage, and taking it away would give them a real leg up.

And with Loki walking straight into Tony’s own territory, Tony’s already that much closer to having the upper hand.

Still, Tony’s an engineer, not a spy. Designing the cuffs had been easy enough, but he hasn’t figured out the best way to get into Loki’s head for long enough to get them on him. He’s hoping that once he’s in a room with the guy, he’ll be able to play it by ear and figure something out.

He doesn’t ever consider that it’s going to play out like this.

“Stalling me won’t change anything,” Loki drawls. Tony stifles a laugh. We’ll see about that, he thinks.

“No no, threatening,” he shoots back, reaching for a handle of scotch. “No drink? You sure? I’m having one.”

He hadn’t been stupid enough to think that Loki would be distracted by alcohol, but hey, it was worth a shot.

Loki doesn’t answer, just swaggers across the room and goes to lean on the bar.

“You won’t get my attention with your weak Midgardian spirits,” he says with a sly grin. “However…there are _other_ things I’d be happy to take from you.”

“Oh yeah?” Tony says, distracted. He stealthily slips on two wrist cuffs of his own, a backup plan in case things go south here.

He almost doesn’t notice the way Loki’s eyeing him hungrily from across the bar.

“Genius…billionaire…._playboy_…philanthropist.” _Ah._ Suddenly the look on his face makes sense. Well, Tony figures, that’s one way to distract your enemy.

“I see you’ve been taking notes,” he says, meeting Loki’s eyes.

Loki studies him for a moment. “Indeed I have,” he says in a low voice, flashing the bedroom eyes. “And perhaps you might find this form to be more pleasing?”

Suddenly, the figure in front of him shifts into that of a beautiful, dark-haired woman. She’s still obviously Loki, but with markedly more feminine features and, Tony can’t help but notice, a pair of very exposed breasts.

“Impressive,” he says after a long pause. He takes a sip of the scotch. “Although I can’t say I took much issue with the original.”

Loki grins, all teeth. “Is that so?”

Tony shrugs. He isn’t sure why he bothered to admit that, but it seems to help his case, so he doesn’t think too much of it. “Sure, if you weren’t, you know, actively trying to destroy my planet, you might be pretty hot.”

Loki bites her lip seductively, tapping her freshly manicured nails on the countertop. Tony isn’t sure what kind of magic she’d used to apply matte black nail polish in the blink of an eye, but it occurs to him that if she’d put this much effort into her appearance just to try seducing him, going along with it might actually be his best option. Getting her into bed would certainly be a distraction.

He downs the rest of his scotch, eyes locked on Loki’s as he steps around the bar and stands right in front of her.

“Still, it’s impressive,” he says, making a show of checking her out. “How do you do that, illusion magic?”

Loki laughs, her voice higher and distinctively less evil than a minute ago. “Shapeshifting,” she says proudly. “I assure you, it is no illusion.”

She takes a step toward him, taking his hand and placing it on her breast.

“See for yourself.”

Tony doesn’t really want to give up that easy, but he also doesn’t want to piss her off, not when he’s this close to having her cornered. He takes another step toward her, his other hand reaching for her waist.

“You want me, don’t you, Stark?” she whispers, and he’d be lying if he said the sound didn’t go right to his dick.

He’s about to throw her some quippy reply, make her work a little harder for it, but she doesn’t give him a chance to answer before her mouth is on his, tongue pressing against his lips, and holy shit. They don’t call Loki _Silvertongue_ for no reason, Tony thinks, briefly wondering what that mouth would feel like on his cock. He doesn’t get a chance to indulge in that fantasy, though, as it seems Loki has other ideas.

She hops up on one of the barstools, hitching up her dress. She’d ditched that ridiculous leather armor for a simple black number that left very little to the imagination. Tony’s hands find their way down to her thighs, finding nothing but bare skin. She hadn’t even bothered with underwear.

“Somebody’s excited,” Tony murmurs, and she responds by wrapping her legs around him, pulling their bodies flush together.  
“Give it to me,” she says, her mouth moving down his jawline.

He reaches under her dress, deft fingers settling between her legs. She’s dripping wet already, legs quivering as he strokes her gently. For someone who’s supposed to be fighting him, she seems surprisingly eager for him to fuck her. Which, hey, Tony can work with that. It’s not like he’s never hate-fucked anyone before.

He slides two fingers inside her, and she gasps, fingernails digging into his shoulder. She’s fun, he’ll give her that.

“You like that?” he whispers, and he can’t hold back a grin at the resulting moan when he curls his fingers inside her.

“More,” she growls, and he feels her tugging clumsily at his belt. He reaches down with his free hand to help her, half-hard already as he unzips his jeans, pulling them down on his hips.

She reaches straight for his cock, stroking him to full hardness while he fingers her, and he can tell she’s getting impatient.

“You want it?” he murmurs, mostly because he wants to hear her say it.

“Yes,” she says, and before he can say anything else, she’s guiding him towards her entrance.

He pushes into her, hard, and that gets a long, drawn-out moan right in his ear. Her hips roll against his, desperately meeting his thrusts.

“Harder,” she hisses, and he’s more than willing to oblige. He figures she can handle it, so he steps up his game, grabbing her ass for leverage as he fucks her fast and rough. She throws her head back, breath coming in quick pants punctuated by deep moans, and it’s fucking hot.

It doesn’t take him long to get there. As he pushes deeper into her, she moans in his ear, and he grips her ass tightly as he comes with a final few thrusts.

He takes a second to catch his breath before he pulls out of her. He doesn’t know if she came, but she looks thoroughly fucked out, still breathing heavily when he seizes his chance. He reaches across the bar with one fluid motion, grabbing the cuffs and slapping them on her wrists.

Her eyes go wide. Her wrists jolt apart, trying to break free, and when she can’t, she stills. Judging from the look on her face, she’d tried to use her magic, and was astonished that it didn’t work. Tony grins.

“That was fun,” he says cheekily, pulling his pants back on and doing up his belt. Her surprise turns to anger as she realizes what just happened.

“You—“

“Here’s a tip for you, longshanks,” Tony says flatly. “Don’t try to fuck with the guy whose teammate you just killed.”

Loki’s shock quickly turns to rage. She scrambles for her scepter, which she’d dropped on the floor at some point, but Tony gets to it first.

“Looking for this?” Tony turns it over in his hand. “Not sure that’s gonna work for you, princess. What with your magic gone and all.”

She charges at him, hands still cuffed together, but with the full force of her Asgardian strength. Even as a woman, she’s strong enough to lift Tony by the neck like he’s nothing more than a ragdoll, his feet dangling several inches off the ground.

“You _dare—_” she hisses, too incensed to form a complete sentence.

Instead, she throws Tony out of a window.

He figures he kind of deserved that, but still. _Bag full of cats._

\--

The cuffs help, if only for a little while. They at least keep Loki in the tower long enough for Natasha to find her and take the scepter. By the time they shut the portal down and take out the Chitauri, Loki’s already found a way around the magic-canceling tech, returning to his usual form and flashy Asgardian armor. But he’s still been defeated, and apparently the embarrassment of having been outsmarted by Tony is enough for him to keep his mouth shut about how it went down.

As they’re taking Loki out of the building, Natasha pulls Tony aside.

“That was quite a getup he was wearing when I found him,” she whispers, and Tony can tell right away that she knows.

“His idea,” he says quickly, but Natasha just grins.

“You do what you have to do.”

He suddenly remembers the planted nudes he’d found of Natasha’s alter ego, and it occurs to him that she’s probably used a similar tactic herself once or twice. The idea is strangely comforting.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell,” she says coyly. “Just consider yourself lucky that she managed to change before Thor found her.”

Yeah, Tony thinks, watching Thor slap a muzzle over his brother's mouth. That’s completely fair.


	2. A little less fight and a little more spark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy (belated) birthday, Loki!
> 
> Okay, we've had a bit of a teaser, now let's get to the real story.

Several months pass.

Tony doesn’t forget, not really. He still has to deal with the nightmares, the flashbacks, the sense of impending doom brought on by the realization that they’re no longer alone in the universe. But he’s creating, he’s building suits, he’s putting together enough distractions that New York isn’t on his mind 100% of the time. Even after his Malibu mansion is destroyed and he moves into the penthouse in Stark Tower, he’s working on moving past it. By the time a year has passed he’s all but forgotten about Loki. In fact, Loki is the farthest thing from his mind, up until one morning when he looks up from the schematics he’s been working on for nearly 17 hours and sees an all-too-familiar silhouette in his doorway.

His heart stops for a second. It gets hard to breathe. Everything suddenly comes rushing back - the falling, the sense that _he is going to die_ \- and even though it’s not actually happening, he still feels like he might die anyway. He briefly considers that it might be a hallucination, but then the silhouette coughs, and he decides it’s definitely real, even if it makes no sense.

What is Loki _doing_ here?

Loki stands still, seemingly waiting for him. If Tony weren’t so caught off guard, he might find that reassuring. Surely if Loki came here to kill him, he’d have done it right away.  
Right?

“Would you like me to call Dr. Banner, sir?”

Shit. That wasn’t good. If JARVIS was trying to intervene on his behalf, he must be in bad shape.

“No, that’s okay,” he answers quickly, trying to ignore the shaking in his voice.

He tries to pull himself together, sitting up and taking another glance at Loki. Now that his vision is clearing, he can see that something isn’t quite right. Loki looks like he usually does, minus the reindeer helmet, but his face tells a different story. He looks exhausted, barely keeping his eyes open as he stares at Tony. He’s also slumped over, carrying something in both arms, and it looks heavy. Well then. Pretty safe to assume he isn’t armed.

“Let him in, J,” Tony says, his curiosity overcoming his anxiety.

The door slides open, and Loki jolts. He glances around, taking in the workshop.

“Your workspace, I take it.”

Tony just stares. Loki jerks his head at the room.

“May I?”

“I opened the door, didn’t I?”

Loki takes a very cautious step through.

“What are you doing here?” Tony says, his surprise more evident than he’d intended.

“Loathe as I am to admit it,” Loki mutters. He pauses, shifting the bundle in his arms. “I need your help.”

Tony stands up, peering at whatever it is Loki is holding, and his heart nearly stops again when he sees what’s under the blanket.

It’s a baby.

“You—what…”

“We need a place to lie low,” Loki says, with no further explanation.

“‘We?’ Who is…” Tony pauses. Thinks about it. Does some math.

“You’re clever, I’m sure you can figure it out.”

This can’t be happening.

“Is this a fucking joke?”

Loki doesn’t answer, just locates an empty spot on the desk and goes to sit. Tony feels like he might pass out. Normally, he’d assume it was one of Loki’s tricks, but something tells him he isn’t that lucky. Still, it doesn’t make any sense. How could Loki…?

“But _how_?” he wonders aloud. “You’re, I mean…”

“I’m what? Male?” Loki finishes for him. He laughs, with no humor in it. “Sometimes. Not then.”

Tony gapes at him.

“As I said, it was no illusion.” Loki shifts the baby, avoiding Tony’s eyes. “Shapeshifting is more than just making myself _look_ like something else.”

“You had to take it all the way,” Tony guesses, feeling a little lightheaded. “All the…plumbing, and everything.”

Loki nods.

It’s silent for a moment as Tony processes this. There’s a lot of implications there, and he isn’t sure he really wants to know the details. Not now, at least.

Loki gently rocks the bundle in his lap.

“You’re sure?” he says, because he still hopes that there’s some chance. “That it’s mine?”

“She,” Loki corrects. _It’s a girl_. “I spent most of the pregnancy in prison, Stark. I have little doubt.”

Yeah, that was wishful thinking. _Alright then,_ Tony thinks. _I guess we’re doing this._

“Does she have a name?”

Loki cracks a half-smile.

“Astrid.”

It’s pretty, Tony can’t lie. Sounds vaguely celestial. Fitting, he supposes, considering she’s kind of an alien.

“So, you’re looking for a place to…what, hide from the Asgardian government with your bastard child?”

Loki shoots him a dirty look. “No,” he says sternly. “I am hiding from far…darker forces.”

Because that’s super reassuring.

\--

At some point, they relocate to the couch, Tony draping his arm over the back and watching Loki incredulously as he explains his side of the story.

“So you weren’t trying to take over Earth?”

“Not exactly,” Loki says exasperatedly, as if tired of explaining. “I _was,_ in a way, but that wasn’t the primary goal.”

“You weren’t acting alone,” Tony amends. “It wasn’t _your_ conquest, you were just—” Enslaved and tortured into compliance, he thinks, but that feels a little harsh. Loki hadn’t outright said that that was what happened, but it was pretty damn well implied.

“So, this Big Bad, this…”

“Thanos.” Loki says it like a curse.

“Thanos,” Tony echoes, trying to keep it all straight. “He’s the ringleader here? He’s the endgame.”

Astrid stirs a little, causing them both to fall silent. She doesn’t wake up. Loki is visibly relieved.

“Yes,” he says, adjusting his hold on Astrid. “And he isn’t happy that I was captured. He gave me the scepter to find the Tesseract, and now he’s lost both. I was safe enough on Asgard, but now, he can track down my magic. It’s only a matter of time before he finds me. Finds us.” He glances down at Astrid, brows pinching together with worry. Tony almost feels sorry for him.

“So why come here?”

The rest makes sense. Just being around the scepter had been enough to drive all the Avengers crazy—the idea that some mystery villain even more powerful than any of them might have used it on Loki the same way that Loki used it on Clint is more than reasonable.

But if he’s no longer safe even on Asgard, what protection could Tony possibly offer him?

“You have…technology,” Loki says, pronouncing it almost like he did _Thanos._ Tony feels vaguely offended. “It isn’t perfect, of course,” Loki adds, and Tony knows he’s right, but he still scowls like a petulant child, because well, he kind of is.

“But with time,” Loki muses, a glimmer of hope in his voice. “Perhaps it will be sufficient to remove my magic entirely.” He looks down, and Tony sees for the first time that he’s genuinely scared. “He would be unable to find us.”

Tony is silent for a moment. That’s a big ask, but he’s pretty sure he can do it. The schematics are already turning in his mind, mapping out exactly what might have been missing. But the question is…

“You’d want to stay here?” He glances down at Astrid—at his daughter. _Oh Jesus._ “With her?”

“I don’t have many other options.”

Tony takes a second to look them over. Loki looks like he’s about to keel over right there on the couch. He certainly doesn’t look like he poses any kind of a threat. And shit, he’s asking Tony to take away his magic. Not just his greatest weapon, but as far as Tony can tell, his greatest point of pride. He must really be desperate.

If Tony refuses, he won’t have anywhere else to go. And neither will Astrid.

“I still don’t know if I can trust you,” he says. Loki laughs.

“Of course not. I know I can’t trust you.” That hurts, somehow, even though Tony knows it’s true. “But I don’t have a choice, do I?”

Tony sighs. He’s going to do this, isn’t he?

“Stay the night,” he says finally. “I need to sleep anyway. I’ll take a look at the cuffs in the morning.”

Loki looks like he could kiss the ground Tony walks on, not that he’d ever admit to it.

“Thank you,” he says sincerely.

“I’m doing this for Astrid,” Tony clarifies, because he’s still pretty mad about New York.

As if on cue, Astrid starts to wake up. What starts as a low murmuring quickly escalates to full-blown wailing.

“Oh, darling,” Loki mutters. He gets to his feet, not without difficulty, and begins rocking Astrid gently. “Shhh. What’s the matter? Are you hungry?”

Tony has the sudden realization then that his tower is in no way equipped for a baby. That includes a complete lack of formula, diapers, or even a place for Astrid to sleep. He also has next to no idea how to procure any of those things. But before he has a chance to truly panic, Loki’s surrounded by a faint green light, and he’s suddenly returned to a _very_ tired-looking version of the female form he’d sported months ago. Including a pair of quite visibly swollen breasts.

Tony coughs, looking away as Loki rather ungraciously tugs down her shirt collar to expose one nipple. He hears Astrid begin to suck and he chances a glance back at them, only to see Loki rolling her eyes.

“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, Stark.”

Well. That’s not _completely_ accurate - Tony’s pretty sure he’s never seen anyone actually breastfeeding before, let alone Loki. But he did have sex with her, so he does his best to tamp down the awkwardness and keep his eyes firmly locked above her shoulders.

“How, um,” he starts, because he’s genuinely curious. “How do you do that? Like…when you switch forms, you just, produce milk?”

Loki laughs, just slightly. “I haven’t switched forms,” she corrects. “I arrived wearing a glamour. I’m afraid now that I’ve begun to produce milk again, I must remain in this form until she is weaned.”

Tony nods slowly, half understanding. The glamour makes sense—Loki’s current form is much worse for wear than he’d looked when he walked in. Her hair is a mess, she’s out of her armor and instead wearing what looks like the Asgardian version of sweats, and there’s milk leaking onto the half of her shirt that isn’t pulled out of the way for Astrid to nurse. But the lactation part is confusing. Had Loki been breastfeeding in prison? How did he manage to stay pregnant while he was a man in New York? _Was_ he even a man in New York, or was that another illusion? Tony has so many questions, and he isn’t even sure how many he actually wants the answers to.

“If you don’t mind,” Loki says before he can ask any of them. “I could use a place to rest.”

“Right,” Tony says, and he suddenly realizes how tired he is himself. When’s the last time he slept again? Time for another cup of coffee, he thinks. “Um, yeah, let’s get you set up…” He stops, remembering suddenly that other people live in this tower, and having Loki accidentally run into any of them could have disastrous consequences.

“The floor just below the dining hall appears to be vacant, Sir.”

God bless JARVIS.

“Okay, yeah, I’ll get you set up there. There should be a bedroom and bathroom all ready to go. Probably a kitchen, too, but not any food…if you need anything you can’t summon from thin air, tell JARVIS and he’ll get me.”

He’s already moving toward the elevator, and Loki follows him, careful not to jostle Astrid too much.

“J, lock down the 29th floor once we get there. No one in or out. If anyone tries, ring me.”

“Already done, Sir.”

They ride to the 29th floor in silence, with Tony sneaking a few glances at Astrid. When she looks up at him and he catches sight of her wide brown eyes for the first time, it’s hard for him to suppress a smile. In spite of the circumstances, she’s beautiful.

“Your presence will now be required to enter or exit this floor, Sir,” JARVIS announces as the elevator opens for them.

Tony leads Loki out into the open living room, trying to ignore the floor-to-ceiling windows opposite them that bring back some rather uncomfortable memories. He instead heads straight for the bedroom, tucked into a dimly lit hallway to their right. Thankfully, it’s fully made up as a guest room, with minimal decor but all the basic necessities.

“I can have a crib delivered for Astrid by tomorrow,” Tony promises, but Loki is already headed for the bed.

“No need.” Cradling Astrid in one arm, she removes her boots with a surprising amount of grace. “She sleeps just fine with me.”

Tony doesn’t really have an answer to that, so he just nods. “Well, sleep well,” he says, feeling very weird offering such pleasantries to someone who had been the closest he had to a mortal enemy not two hours ago. “I’ll, uh, try to have some breakfast ready tomorrow.”

Loki doesn’t reply, and Tony doesn’t give her a chance to, slipping out in a rush and closing the door behind him.

\--

He ends up buying the crib anyway. Loki might be fine sleeping with Astrid on her chest, but every website he visits in his manic search for everything he needed to know about caring for a newborn says that sharing a bed carries the risk of crushing the baby to death. Considering Loki is six feet tall even as a woman and definitely heavier than a normal human, he’s not a fan of those odds. So he buys the crib, and a pacifier, and a couple of onesies, and a month’s supply of diapers (he isn’t sure what size to get so he gets them all), and by the time he gets around to the baby blankets he realizes it’s getting difficult to breathe.

That’s his kid up there. His daughter. There isn’t much doubt—Loki may be the god of lies, but he hadn’t shown any sign of deceit when he practically begged for Tony’s assistance. And besides, Astrid looks just like him. Or like a weird combination of him and Loki, which only serves to remind him that he now _has a child with Loki,_ which is just so many levels of fucked up. Of all the people he could have had an illegitimate kid with, it had to be the one supervillain he fucked on a whim in an effort to trap him.

Fuck, he needs a drink.

Or maybe an oxygen tank, because right now he kind of feels like he’s underwater, his vision going hazy as images of teddy bears and baby carriages fill up his screen. He looks away instead, searching the room for something to grab his attention and coming up short. Everything is a blur. Fuck, he really can’t see. He gasps, trying to return his breathing to normal.

He forces himself not to cry—he’s already had more than enough destruction of his dignity for one day, thank you very much—so he just sits there, scrambling to get his thoughts in order. The thought of having a child is terrifying, and the thought of that child also belonging to Loki, well, that’s a level of uncertainty his sleep-deprived brain can’t even begin to comprehend. But there again, that’s a tiny human (or half-human) up there who is partly depending on him to protect her. Paternal instincts he wasn’t even sure he had are already starting to kick in. He can deal with the panic later. Right now, he’s got to get this tower ready to handle both an infant and Loki. That means finishing up his shopping list—baby blankets, crib mobiles, maybe one of those stuffed Iron Man bears with an embroidered arc reactor on the chest that Bruce had joked about buying for him—and then, once he’s got the baby taken care of, getting to work on those cuffs.

\--

The dream begins much the same as it usually does.

Loki’s falling, the Bifrost fading into nothingness as the Void consumes him, time and space losing their meaning until he isn’t sure how fast or how long he’s been moving. There are no stars, just endless blackness, threatening to envelop him completely until his existence is a mere memory.

Then, just when he’s sure he will never emerge, he hits the ground hard.

He’s not on any planet that’s familiar to him, and there’s no sun or star in view to give him any clues. He’s surrounded by jagged rocks, a terrain that by all accounts should have killed him on impact, but by some miracle he survived.

It is then that he realizes he hasn’t landed on the rocks at all, but in someone’s arms.

This is where the dream diverges. Where ordinarily he would find himself in the arms of Thanos, the mad titan who saved his life and then destroyed it all over again, he’s now being rescued by someone much smaller. Someone whose arms are hard and cold and not at all like the skin of a Deviant.

Someone who seems almost to be made of iron.

His head whips around and, to his horror, he sees the faceplate of the Iron Man armor lift to reveal the smug face of Tony Stark.

“Make your move, Reindeer Games.”

Loki wakes up in a cold sweat, taking a few moments to remember herself. She’s in female form, her sleeping daughter on her chest between sore breasts, and they’ve taken refuge in Stark’s guest bedroom.

Astrid, sensing her discomfort, begins to stir. “Shh, darling,“ she whispers, holding her child close and praying that she will drift back to sleep. She runs her fingers through Astrid’s dark curls, as much for her own comfort as the child’s.

Stark isn’t here. She’s safe, for now.

_We’re safe here,_ she tells herself. Now if only she could believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pronouns are hard.


	3. You're on the run from the stun of the flame thrower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And heeeere's Shanta!

Naturally, Tony doesn’t end up getting to sleep that night. By the time he’s finished ordering supplies for Astrid, it’s nearly dawn, and he knows even trying would be fruitless at this point. He decides, then, to spend the early morning in the penthouse, making what he hopes is enough breakfast to properly feed a breastfeeding Norse god who’s been living off of prison food for the past few months. Some part of him hopes that the food in Asgardian prisons is at least marginally better than what they allegedly serve here on Earth, because Loki’s been eating for herself and Tony’s daughter, and while he may have only known he’s a father for a couple of hours now, he already wants nothing but the best for that kid.

He loads himself into the elevator, balancing a full plate of bacon in one hand and a huge stack of pancakes in the other, syrup bottle tucked under one arm and cutlery between his teeth. When he arrives, Loki is asleep on the couch just outside the elevator, completely topless with Astrid suckling at one swollen tit.

Well. This is his life now.

“Breakfast,” he says as a greeting, and Loki cracks one eye open, rolling her head lazily to glance at Tony. She sits up, cradling Astrid carefully. It doesn’t seem to work, though, because Astrid quickly becomes agitated, making pained noises that aren’t quite crying but definitely don’t sound happy.

“Oh, no, darling.” Loki groans, taking Astrid in both arms and trying to get her to latch on again. “Come on now.”

“Is she alright?” Tony isn’t sure if he can help, but he feels useless just standing there.

“The transition has been difficult for her.”

Sensing Tony’s confusion, Loki sighs and explains further.

“She had a wet nurse, at first. While I was imprisoned. My...mother arranged it.” Her voice catches on “mother,” and Tony knows that feeling all too well. “After I escaped I managed to perform a spell to induce lactation, but she is unaccustomed to nursing with me.”

Tony decides that plausible deniability is the way to go, so he doesn’t even touch the issue of Loki escaping from prison.

“Well, you’re her mother, right? She should take to it.”

He’s not really sure why he’s attempting to console her, but she looks pretty upset about the whole situation, and it’s how his brain chooses to respond. He blames it on his lack of sleep.

“I suppose so.”

Just like that, Astrid finally latches back on, and Loki sighs with relief, her whole body relaxing against the child in her arms. She holds her tenderly, stroking the black curls adorning her head, and it’s like Tony’s starting to get a glimpse of who Loki really was before Thanos got to him—a real person instead of a manic supervillain.

“Okay, you’ve gotta be starving by now, so help yourself.” Tony’s mouth works ahead of his brain, pulling him out of his thoughts and back to the situation at hand. “Bacon, pancakes, whichever you’re in the mood for. Or both. Shit, do you want something to drink? I think we have orange juice downstairs somewhere.”

“Water will do fine.”

“Right, yeah, water. I can get that up here, let me—“ He steals away into the kitchen and finds a glass in one of the generically-stocked cabinets. “I’ll have JARVIS place an order for groceries, let me know if there’s anything you want.” He and Bruce probably need some things too. Might as well get all the shopping done at once.

He fills a glass from the tap on the fridge and brings it back out to Loki, who takes it carefully in the hand that isn’t holding Astrid.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

“I’ve got some supplies coming.” Tony stands there awkwardly, hands in his pockets. “Diapers and all that. Some toys, blankets. And I’m getting a crib, too, just so you know. I don’t want you rolling over and crushing her in your sleep.”

He realizes he could have phrased that a bit more delicately, as Loki is now staring daggers at him.

“It’s just that I read some stuff, and apparently the best way for them to sleep is—“

“Stark.”

Loki’s harsh tone stops him in his tracks.

“I’m perfectly capable of caring for my daughter myself, thank you.”

That shouldn’t sting as much as it does. Tony hadn’t really had any delusions about this being an equal-parts co-parenting adventure, but some part of him had believed that if Loki chose to come here with Astrid, then maybe she was looking for his assistance with more than just the magic-hiding stuff. But it looks like that isn’t the case.

“Fine,” he says tightly, deciding that it isn’t worth the argument. He nods toward the plates. “Enjoy your breakfast. JARVIS’ll ring when the deliveries get here.”

Loki doesn’t say anything as he turns back to the elevator in a huff.

\--

Tony doesn’t end up getting to the cuffs that day, because he needs access to the sensors in Bruce’s lab, and Bruce has already staked a claim on the space. Tony can’t exactly monopolize his equipment to study magic without revealing that he’s taken Loki in as a fugitive. Or a refugee, or whatever. He’s not totally clear on the specifics of the situation, but he’s pretty sure SHIELD still considers Loki to be a war criminal, so really the fewer people know about all this, the better. Plus, he is so not in the mood for Bruce’s silent disapproval after hearing that Loki gave birth to Tony’s illegitimate child.

But Loki obviously isn’t in the mood to chat, so Tony decides he’s going to put off working on the cuffs and spend the day annoying Bruce and Shanta instead.

Bruce had taken quite a liking to the tower after New York, and since he didn’t really have anywhere else to go he ended up moving in pretty quickly. He’d brought with him a little girl from India who he was in the process of adopting. Shanta had been a SHIELD recruit who’d worked with Natasha to bring Bruce in for the Avengers Initiative, and right after New York Bruce had decided to track her down and save her from growing up as one of SHIELD’s lackeys. Tony had been busy chasing down a terrorist in Miami during most of the process, so he’s a little fuzzy on the details, but when he moved back into the penthouse after his mansion was destroyed, suddenly he found himself with a twitchy scientist and a ten-year-old ex-spy as roommates. All things considered, it’s not the worst living situation.

Both of those roommates are in the lab when he gets down there. Shanta’s old enough now to be left alone on Bruce’s floor, but she’s young enough to not want to be by herself, so she spends a lot of time following Bruce around. He patiently narrates whatever it is he’s doing so she can learn, and Tony actually finds it pretty endearing. He catches himself wondering if he might one day be able to do the same with Astrid, but after what just happened upstairs, he squashes that thought pretty quickly.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, bringing his attention back to the child he’s actually permitted to interact with. Shanta grins and waves from her spot next to Bruce.

“Hi Tony,” Bruce greets him, not looking up from his microscope. Tony passes him and goes straight for the fridge, digging out a bag of frozen strawberries. He knows if he has a drink, he’ll just fall asleep, so he opts for stress eating instead. He pops a strawberry in his mouth and winces at the sudden cold. Shanta seems to find this hilarious. He sticks out his tongue at her, hoping Bruce doesn’t notice.

“Shanta, would you like to take a look?” Bruce steps back from the microscope and slides it over to his daughter. She gets up on her tiptoes and examines the slide. Tony’s pretty sure she has no idea what’s on it or how to interpret it, but she does like looking.

“Whoa,” she says, and Tony can’t help but smile.

“Can you tell where the cells are?” Bruce prompts her.

Shanta nods. “The little black dots are the nucleuses, right?”

“Nuclei,” Bruce corrects. “But yes. Can you see the mitochondria? That’s what I’m looking at today.”

“Is that the little one that looks like a potato?”

Tony has to bite back a laugh.

“It sure does, nice job!”

Shanta beams as she steps back from the microscope, taking a look at Bruce’s notes. She’s a clever kid, but her skills are mostly in espionage, so while she can speak five languages she doesn’t really know much at all about biochemistry. Bruce has taught her the basics, but when it comes to his notes, they might as well be Greek. Unless she can read Greek, which honestly, she might be able to.

“Is the experiment going good?” she asks.

Bruce nods. “It’s almost done. One more week and I’ll be running the final tests.”

“How are the results looking, Brucie bear?” Tony pipes up from across the room.

Bruce, to his credit, doesn’t react at all to the nickname. “Can’t say for sure yet,” he mutters as he scratches out some final notes. He sets down his pencil and looks up at Tony for the first time. His expression shifts. “Tony, when’s the last time you slept?”

Shit. Tony hadn’t considered it, but he probably looks awful. He’d been up all night ordering supplies for Astrid and never got a chance to lie down. He hasn’t shaved in days, hasn’t slept in at least 24 hours, and he’s just been faced with the news that he has a daughter with one of their most dangerous supervillains.

Oh, and had a panic attack over it. That too.

Maybe coming down here wasn’t the best idea.

“Uh, hard to say, it’s not like the workshop gets much natural light. Maybe…20 hours?” He tries not to lowball it too much, but that’s still way too long, and he’s pretty sure Bruce knows he’s lying anyway.

“Tony, go to sleep.”

Tony sighs. “Listen, I meant to, but the thing is—“

“Tony.” Bruce cuts him off, blessedly sparing him from making up a half-assed lie on the spot. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

He knows that. He does. It’s just that it’s so much easier to keep his thoughts in check while he’s awake.

Bruce takes a few steps closer to him, lowering his voice so Shanta can’t hear. “If it’s nightmares you’re worried about—”

“I’m fine, Bruce.” He tacks on a big old fake smile to really drive it home. It doesn’t work. “I’ll go to sleep. Promise.” He steps back, sighing dramatically. “Not like I can work down here anyway, with you to taking up all my space.” He rolls his eyes exaggeratedly at Shanta, who giggles. Bruce shakes his head, but he can’t quite hold back a smile.

“Go to bed, Tony,” Shanta echoes, and fuck, now he’s going to be hearing that for the next few months.

“Grownups don’t have bedtime,” he reminds her, and Bruce tuts.

“Oh yes they do.”

He finishes off the rest of the strawberries as he retreats out of the lab, leaving Bruce and Shanta to continue their lesson on cellular structure. He briefly considers stopping by the 29th floor on the way up, just to check in, but he remembers their last conversation and decides it isn’t worth it. Loki clearly has no interest in associating with him beyond his tech, and if he can’t work on that now, well, there’s no point in riling her up.

He’ll just have to recharge as best he can before spending the night with the lab to himself.

\--

In preparation for losing all her access to magic, Loki spends the day retrieving everything she can from her pocket dimension, spreading her belongings throughout her new bedroom. She mainly has the books sent by Frigga while she was in prison, as well as some clothing, diapers for Astrid, food she’d lifted from the kitchens, and a few personal effects she hadn’t wanted to part with. This new room is well-furnished, and she is blessedly able to find space for everything she’d brought with her. By the time she finishes, it almost looks like someone lives here.

It just doesn’t quite feel like it’s Loki.

Living in Stark Tower had been the last thing she’d wanted for herself and her child, but after fleeing Asgard, she truly felt as though she had no other option. Stark may be infuriating at the best of times, but he is a genius, that much is clear. Should he manage to perfect his anti-magic technology, she and Astrid will be essentially invisible. With no seiðr to set her apart, she will become all but indistinguishable from any other being on this planet.

Removing her very essence in order to continue living. It’s poetic, in a tragic sort of way.

She hardly has the chance to finish placing her things before Astrid begins to cry. She does that quite a lot, and while Loki is well aware that such is the way of babies, she cannot help but worry that there’s something more to it. Astrid had been through so much even before they fled Asgard, and now, on an unfamiliar planet with a mother who might as well be a stranger, she is no doubt struggling to make sense of it all.

“Come here, darling,” Loki whispers in a tired voice.

Rather than lifting Astrid up, she joins her daughter on the bed, settling into the blankets and drawing her child into her chest. She doesn’t make an effort to feed, just snuggles against her mother, her cries fading into a low whimpering.

“It will be all right,” Loki tells her, reassuring herself as much as the child. “Mother is here. You’re all right.”

She missed this feeling, the warmth of a child held to her breast. It was a luxury taken away from her far too soon with Hela and all the others. Not this time. She vows then and there that she will not let anyone, least of all not Odin, take this child away from her.

“Would you like to hear a story?” Astrid, of course, does not answer, but Loki can sense that she finds comfort in her mother’s voice regardless of whether she can understand her meaning. A small smile creeps across her face as she gently rocks her child back and forth.

“Let me tell you about the time my brother was married to a giant.”


	4. Lit up like a burst of magic in the air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and those who offered encouragement. And another special shout to my lovely beta, whose science expertise made this chapter a little less incoherent nonsense. This one is nerd-approved, folks.

It turns out that these magic-blocking handcuffs are way more difficult than Tony had ever imagined.

He’s got a decent set of readings on Loki’s energy signature from last year, but as they’d quickly figured out, the cuffs don’t block every type of magic. There are ways around the tech, and if Loki was clever enough to figure them out even under mind control, this Thanos guy will definitely find the loophole. Unfortunately, Tony isn’t sure how to go about closing that loophole other than by studying every single possible form of magic Loki can produce and developing a way to block all of them at once. That would require more time than he has, and it would also involve a lot of using Loki like a lab rat, which Tony guesses is not an option.

He’s in the lab pouring his third cup of coffee and trying to think of a plan B when he’s interrupted by a ping from JARVIS.

“Sir, you are wanted on the 29th floor.”

Tony instantly gets to his feet. Loki’s been living here about a week, and aside from deliveries of baby supplies and groceries as they come in, they haven’t interacted at all. If she wants him for something, it’s probably serious.

He’s in the elevator and halfway up before he has a chance to start thinking through the possibilities. Is something wrong with Astrid? He hopes to god that’s not it, because if Loki can’t handle it, he certainly can’t. But he can’t imagine what else might have Loki calling for him at 3 in the morning.

The elevator dings, and the doors open up to reveal Loki, alone on the couch.

“Where’s Astrid?” Tony says reflexively.

“Asleep,” Loki replies. “She’s taken a liking to her crib.”

Tony almost makes a snarky comment about never receiving a thank you, but he holds back.

“What did you need me for?” he asks instead, taking a few cautious steps toward the couch.

“How close are you to refining the handcuffs?”

Tony almost rolls his eyes at himself. Of course that’s what Loki wants. The fact that it’s 3 am is inconsequential - who even knows how long an Asgardian day lasts. Loki probably knew he was up working anyway.

“Closer,” he assures her, perching on the arm of the couch. “I think I’ve expanded them to include more types of magic, but I don’t know if it’ll be—“

“What can I do to ensure it gets done quickly?”

Tony’s almost surprised at the sudden offer for help.

“Well, if you’d like to actually help, that would definitely speed up the process.” He can’t help being a little snarky—Loki hasn’t exactly been the most gracious houseguest, after all. He sighs. “I need more readings. If I’m going to design this thing without any loopholes, I need to know what the loopholes look like.”

Loki considers this for a moment. “And how would you get these readings?”

“I’ve got some sensors downstairs. If you can demonstrate as many different kinds of magic as you’re capable of, I can get a feel for what’s different and what might sneak through.”  
Tony all but holds his breath waiting for Loki’s answer. It’s a big ask, he can tell that much. But Loki is desperate.

“Alright,” she agrees. Tony breathes a sigh of relief.

“Okay. Great.” He glances back toward the bedroom where Astrid is sleeping. “Should we start now, or…”

“Might as well,” Loki says, getting to her feet. “I just put Astrid down. She’ll probably sleep for a few hours at least.”

Tony doesn’t know much about babies, but that sounds like wishful thinking to him.

“JARVIS can let us know as soon as she wakes up,” he offers.

\--

In addition to shapeshifting and, apparently, inducing lactation, Loki can make objects disappear, create force fields, and cast illusions, including way more than the simple “duplicate Loki” trick she’d pulled on Thor in the Helicarrier. She summons an incredibly realistic-looking black cat that Tony almost tries to pet before realizing it doesn’t have a corporeal form. Loki laughs at him and he fixes her with a glare. She calls the cat back to her, giving him the chance to take a few readings on it before it vanishes into green mist.

“Okay, Elphaba, got any more tricks up your sleeve?”

Loki actually has to think about it. “I can’t think of anything more that would give you a different reading.”

Tony frowns. Unless he’s missing something big, he hasn’t yet found anything that his original design wouldn’t block out. Aside from some minor differences between spells, all of Loki’s magic has displayed a pretty similar energy signature.

“What spell did you use to get out of the cuffs the first time?”

Loki steps off the platform he has his machines directed towards, curiously glancing at his notes on the screen.

“I teleported,” she says, and then it hits both of them and they exchange wide-eyed looks of sudden understanding.

“Teleporting,” he repeats. “It puts you out of range. The cuffs only block a localized signal.”

“But how would they allow me to do it in the first place?”

Tony glances around, a vague idea forming in his mind.

“Step back up,” he says. “I want to check something.”

Loki looks confused, but she obliges, returning to her position on a raised platform under all his sensors.

“Okay, now teleport yourself to the other side of the room.”

He’s prepared for it, but it still makes him jump a bit when Loki suddenly disappears.

He checks the scans. Yup. Just like he’d thought.

“Now come back.”

Loki reappears in front of him, and Tony’s eyes light up as his idea is confirmed.

“That’s it,” he whispers, awe evident in his voice.

“What is?”

Loki hops down from the platform to join him in front of the screens.

“The actual magic doesn’t come from where you are,” he explains. “It’s projected to where you want to go. Then it pulls you there. The cuffs can’t block a magic signal that technically comes from outside of you.”

Loki nods slowly as she takes in what he’s saying.

“Magic doesn’t have a location,” she whispers, confirming his theory. “It’s a part of me, but it doesn’t come from me.”

“I’d have to block the signal from a much wider radius to prevent it from reaching you.”

“You’d have to block the magic of Yggdrasil.”

Tony isn’t sure what Yggdrasil is, but he’s suddenly distracted when their eyes meet and he realizes just how close he is to Loki. She’s stepped well into his personal space by now, her eyes regarding him with something that looks awfully like amazement. His breath catches in his throat.

“Sir?” JARVIS says, and Loki looks up, the moment screeching to a halt. Tony’s first thought is that Astrid must be hungry—he isn’t sure how long they’ve been down here, or how often babies need to eat, for that matter—but JARVIS doesn’t get the chance to say anything else before Loki disappears in a flash of green.

Once she’s gone, Tony can see what the commotion is about. Through the glass wall opposite his little setup, he sees Bruce punching in his code to the lab door. Tony has all of five seconds to make up an excuse for what he’s studying down here (and silently praise JARVIS for saving both their skins) before Bruce stumbles in, clutching a cup of tea.

“I’m just down here to check on the plants. I’ll be out of your hair in a second.”

Bruce is really the best possible person to share the lab with, Tony thinks as he watches him examine the row of plants under his heat lamp. He completely understands Tony’s need for privacy sometimes, and he’s weirdly good at determining when those times are.

Unfortunately for Tony, his insight came a little too late on this one.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony says, getting to his feet and closing down any of his documents that contain identifying information about Loki. JARVIS is clever enough to keep all of them encrypted, and he trusts Bruce not to go snooping anyway. “I was just about to head up.”

“You’ve got plans?”

“Yeah,” Tony lies. “Stark Industries stuff. Pepper’s coming by later. It’ll be a total snoozefest, I’d keep my distance if I were you.”

It’s a little much, but if Bruce suspects he’s lying, he doesn’t say anything. “Well, I’ll see you on the other side.”

Tony chuckles. “Have fun with your plants.”

Once he’s safely out of the lab, Tony sighs deeply. They’ve figured it out. He knows what he’s looking for now, at least. But a long-range magic-blocking device? One that encompasses the entire tower, or at least a whole floor?

This is going to be a lot harder than he thought.

\--

Instead of going right back up to the penthouse, Tony finds himself stopping on the 29th floor. Loki is alone on the couch again, this time reading a book. He’s pretty sure it isn’t one he owns, and he decides he doesn’t want to ask where she got it from. She looks up as he enters, frowning.

“Stark.”

It’s not really a greeting, but he’ll take what he can get.

“Astrid still asleep?”

Loki nods, eyes flicking back down to the book. “For the moment, at least.”

Tony snorts. He passes right by her and goes straight for the bar.

“You want a drink?”

He’s got a bar on every floor. It seemed like a given when he built the place, even if Pepper let her disapproval be widely known. Whatever. Pepper isn’t here now.  
Loki, however, wears an exasperated look that bears an eerie resemblance.

“I’m breastfeeding, Stark.”

Shit. Fair point. It’s a good thing he’s not the one responsible for this child.

“I still owe you one.” He pulls out a bottle of scotch, popping the top off with one hand and pouring a glass. Straight up, as one does when drinking 25-year scotch at 6 am on a Sunday. He takes a sip and winces at the burn.

“I’ll be sure to collect as soon as I’m able.”

Loki’s dry sarcasm doesn’t quite mask the fact that she clearly does want a drink. Tony can’t blame her.

“So, the lab’s been taken over.” Tony flops down on the couch, and Loki glares at him but says nothing. “But I feel like we got somewhere.”

Loki sighs softly, apparently conceding to the fact that he’s here now and setting her book down. Tony’s surprised she doesn’t just _whoosh_ it away.

“Could you make a device that would cloak all magic within this building?”

Tony thinks it over, taking another sip of scotch.

“Maybe,” he says finally. “I think so, or at the very least this floor. It would almost have to spread out like a force field. It’s like…blocking radiation, really.”

Loki laughs humorlessly. “Perhaps I came to the wrong scientist.”

She’s being facetious, but she’s right, Tony realizes. This definitely feels more like Bruce’s territory than his.

“What are you thinking?”

She watches him with confusion as he sits up, setting down the glass.

“Bruce,” he says, and her expression grows apprehensive. “No, come on, seriously - we can put our heads together on this one, it’ll get done so much faster.”

“I requested _your_ help, Stark.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, you trust the Jolly Green Giant even less than you trust me. But come on, Loki. You’re telling me magic is this…invisible presence that hangs in the air and interacts with you somehow? That’s a wave. You’re telling me magic is a wave, and that’s Bruce’s department, and that’s why SHIELD brought him in to find the Tesseract in the first place. That thing’s 90% gamma radiation, and no one knows gamma radiation like Bruce. He’s your guy, Loki, trust me.”

He knows as soon as he says it that “trust me” is the wrong choice of words, but from the looks of it, Loki knows he’s right.

“And do you plan to tell him about…” She waves her hand, and Tony knows she means Astrid. He hesitates.

“I might have to,” he admits, though he hates the idea. He doesn’t want to think about what Bruce will have to say about their little dalliance. But if he’s going to tell Bruce about Loki, it doesn’t feel right to leave Astrid out of it. Especially since he’s going to have to explain why Loki’s decided to remain female for the time being.

Loki considers that, and after a few painful seconds, she nods, apparently deciding that the risk of being caught by Thanos is worse than the judgment of Tony’s roommate.

“Do what you must,” she says, and picks up her book. Clearly their conversation is over.

_Well_, Tony thinks to himself as he steps back into the elevator, downing the rest of the scotch. _Here goes nothing_.


	5. The lights of the ashes shoulder through hills and vales

Loki _really_ hadn’t wanted to get any of Stark’s friends involved.

If she’d wanted to get revenge on him after he’d tricked her so humiliatingly, she could have easily told any one of the Avengers what exactly had transpired between them. She could have told Fury, even, which no doubt would have landed Stark in some real trouble. But she hadn’t.

Because truthfully, she hadn’t wanted _anyone_ to know.

She didn’t want anyone to know she’d been so distracted as to jeopardize her entire mission in order to get into Tony Stark’s pants. She didn’t want anyone to know she’d been so taken with him, so intrigued by his quick wit and discerning mind that she’d all but forgotten herself. She didn’t want anyone to know how much she hadn’t been in her right mind at the time, and how easy it would have been to distract her from her goals.

She certainly didn’t want anyone to know that when she’d fled her homeland with her daughter—with _their_ daughter—Stark was the first person she thought to seek out for help.

It wasn’t that she trusted Stark. Of course she didn’t. But as much as she turned up her nose at his Midgardian technology, she did have faith in his capabilities, and the device he’d used to trap her had shown promise. Loki’s seiðr, while often her greatest asset, is also a liability, particularly while she’s being pursued by one of the most powerful beings in the universe. On her own, she might not have cared. But now that she has Astrid to look after…

The child in question is now asleep in her arms, sated after nursing for most of the afternoon. Loki’s arms are getting stiff, but she doesn’t move, doesn’t put Astrid back in her crib. She lets her child sleep, safe at her mother’s breast, blissfully unaware of how alone she truly is in this universe.

Disgusted as she was by the prospect of bearing a child sired by a mortal, Loki couldn’t bring herself to give it up. She’d endured nine months of masking her condition from everyone in Asgard’s dungeons until the child was finally born, assisted by Frigga herself, who had cared for Astrid up until the end of her life. But with Frigga’s death, Loki had no choice. She couldn’t leave a bastard, half-human half-giant infant alone on Asgard, especially not once Odin caught wind of the situation.

And, well, Stark might not be anywhere close to her first choice for a co-parent, but he is the child’s true father, after all.

That’s one of the things that scares her the most.

Between Loki, the unwanted offspring of a Frost Giant, and Tony Stark, who for all his intelligence is still unquestionably mortal, there are many on Asgard who would say that such a child has no right to exist. She is nothing to them—less than nothing, even. She is something that simply should not be.

“You’re a monster,” Loki whispers, clutching Astrid closer to her chest. Astrid does not move.

A monster, perhaps. But Loki cannot deny in that moment the love she feels for her child. Truthfully, from the moment she laid eyes on the little beast, she never could.

And in that moment, she understands a little of what it must have been like for Frigga, all those centuries ago.

—

Bruce, beautiful human that he is, takes the news way better than Tony expected.

“So you’re saying Loki was under mind control the whole time? Just like Selvig and Clint?”

“I think so. He definitely wasn’t the one in charge of the whole operation.” Tony prepares to hear about how outlandish that sounds and how stupid he is for believing the God of Lies, but Bruce just nods sagely.

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

Tony almost does a double take. “Really?”

“Well, sure.” Bruce stirs his tea thoughtfully. “That guy we saw was your average megalomaniac supervilain. No big deal, right? Except Thor knew him before that, and did you hear the way he talked about his kid brother? It was like a totally different person.”

“Exactly!” Tony all but shouts, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the feeling of having Bruce on the same page. “Exactly. Thor’s brother was a pranking little shit, not a world conqueror. And hey, I’ve talked to Loki since, and honestly, I get it. You should see the way she is with—”

He catches himself, but it’s too late.

“She?”

“It’s, uh. Loki’s complicated. He—She—_They_ can shapeshift.”

Bruce blinks. Tony braces himself.

“She’s um. She’s got a kid.”

He avoids Bruce’s eyes as his eyebrows shoot past his hairline.

“A _kid_? Like a baby?” He pauses for a second before whispering incredulously, “_Loki_?”

“Part of the reason she came here.”

Tony looks guilty as fuck right now, and he knows it, can see the wheels turning even as he looks pointedly away from Bruce.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Tony wants to answer, but he can’t. He knows he doesn’t need to.

“Is it..” Bruce hesitates. He knows the answer, but he can’t quite work out how it could be true. “Oh my God, Tony. It’s _yours_?”

“Give the man a prize.”

“Tony…” Bruce begins severely, as though about to admonish a young child. “How?”

“In the tower? Before Loki threw me out the window?” Bruce’s eyes go wide, and Tony interrupts. “I didn’t _mean_ to, it wasn’t like a planned thing. I needed to distract him, and, well…_she_ gave me a way in.” He looks up sheepishly, finally meeting Bruce’s eyes. “I had no idea—I couldn’t _imagine_—I mean, yeah, she had—“

“Tony.” Bruce scrubs a hand over his face, expression looking pained. “I don’t need to know the details.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“So you’ve got a kid.”

He smiles tightly. “Yeah, guess it makes two of us.” He’s trying to make a joke, but Bruce doesn’t laugh.

“Are you sure about this, Tony?" Bruce turns away from him, pacing across the lab in a dangerously irate way. "I mean, it all makes sense, but Loki’s still a wild card. Plus, Shanta’s here now, and I don’t want her to be in danger if he decides he wants to take over Earth for real this time.”

He has a point. Shanta might be a trained spy, but she’s still ten, and even if she could hold her own in battle they would never want her to.

“I get it. Parenting instincts and all that. Trust me, Bruce, I do. But at the same time...Loki’s in that boat now too.”

Bruce nods thoughtfully, finally coming to a stop and looking back at Tony. “You think that’ll be enough?”

“Loki came to me for help. Offered to completely give up her magic so she can hide here with the kid.” With _Astrid_, he thinks, but he doesn’t see the point in getting familiar. Not now. “I’m not saying I trust her, but let’s be honest. If she was planning to kill us, she’d have done it by now.”

Bruce considers that. “Fair enough,” he concedes.

Tony grins in spite of himself.

“Okay, I’ll do my best here,” he agrees, fixing Tony with a serious glare. “But if things go south, that’s on you.”

“Of course, sugar plum.” Tony grins, and adds sincerely, “I’ll make sure Shanta’s safe. Promise.”

Bruce shakes his head, but he smiles.

“Let’s get this thing going before Loki changes her mind about killing us.”

—

Even after two weeks of cohabitation, Tony hasn’t quite gotten accustomed to the sight of female Loki with her breasts bare. She isn’t even bothering to wear a shirt this time, just lounging on the couch in what look like yoga pants with Astrid in her arms. She glances up at Tony when he walks in, unsurprised but not at all happy to see him.

“Don’t tell me you’ve come across an issue.”

“No,” Tony assures her, struggling to maintain a normal amount of eye contact. She rolls her eyes.

“Honestly, Stark,” she mutters, adjusting Astrid in her arms. He’s about to apologize, but she doesn’t let him. “Then what do you need from me?”

For some reason, that strikes a nerve.

“What, do I have to _need_ something to come up here? Can’t I just stop by? To chat?”

Loki looks at him like he’s grown an extra limb.

“Maybe say hi to my daughter?” he continues, because he’s never been very good at knowing when to stop. “You know, I’ve hardly even seen her since you’ve been here. Haven’t even held her.”

His put-upon expression of disappointment comes dangerously close to betraying real hurt. He stops talking for once and settles for crossing his arms, staring Loki down with a very exaggerated pout. Loki doesn’t buy it.

“What do you want, Stark?”

He should have known better than to try to play games with the God of Lies.

“We need to run more tests,” he concedes, dropping the act. “We’re getting there, but we need to see it in action to know how well it works.”

Loki nods slowly. “You’re in luck. She’s almost finished.” He gestures to Astrid, who Tony realizes looks sleepy as she suckles at Loki’s breast.

Loki gets to her feet, gently adjusting Astrid as Tony leads them both into the elevator. Just as she’d said, Astrid finishes feeding soon after the doors close, and she nestles into Loki’s arm, eyes slipping shut. Tony is surprised to see a genuine smile cross Loki’s features. It fades in a moment as she looks up at Tony.

“Did you _want_ to hold her?”

There’s no harshness in her voice. She sounds uncharacteristically genuine.

“U-um.” He looks between Loki and Astrid. “Sure.”

Tony isn’t sure what to make of it as Loki leans across him, very gently placing Astrid in his arms. He’s initially caught off guard by her bare breasts pressing against him, but that all fades away when he pulls back with Astrid in his arms. She’s heavier than he expected, but it’s not unpleasant, especially since she’s so warm. She adjusts to Tony’s grip, still asleep even as Loki withdraws.

“Wow, she sleeps well,” he says, because he can’t think of anything else to say. To his surprise, Loki chuckles.

“After nursing? Oh yes. The trouble is getting her to stay that way for more than an hour.”

Tony smiles. He can’t help it. The sight of his baby girl in his arms is probably the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, despite the circumstances.

They reach the lab, and Tony stiffens as the doors open and JARVIS alerts Bruce to their arrival. He’s afraid the sudden noise will wake Astrid, and he’s afraid to move for the same reason.

“Hey, Loki,” Bruce says nervously, and Tony realizes he has to go with them or there might end up being bloodshed. He takes a few cautious steps out of the elevator, balancing Astrid as best he can. To his immense relief, she stays asleep.

“Hello, Bruce,” Loki says with a tight smile. She’s summoned a shirt from somewhere, thank Christ, but she neglected to also summon a bra, and Tony’s pretty sure there’s milk leaking onto the thin fabric. She’s quite likely too tired to care.

“Is that your daughter?” Bruce turns his attention to Tony and Astrid, craning his neck for a better look. Tony beams, sidling up to him and angling his body so Bruce can see her face. “She’s beautiful.”

“She has good genes,” Loki says with a lazy grin that fades almost immediately, and Tony’s brain short-circuits momentarily as he tries to process that. Was she actually _complimenting_ him?

“Alright, so this thing,” Bruce interrupts, sparing Tony from having to think too hard about it. “We _think_ it’s about ready to go. We’re just unsure of the range. It’s hard to tell how far it goes with the equipment we have down here. So…”

“So that’s where you come in.” Tony takes over, stepping deliberately between Loki and Bruce. “If you can try teleporting to various parts of the Tower, we can see how far you’re able to get.” He exchanges glances with Bruce. “You’ll have to be careful, though. Some of these floors are occupied. No scaring innocent SI workers—you only go where we tell you.”

Loki nods, working through the process in her mind. “All right.”

Tony gives Bruce the thumbs-up, and he fires up their machine. Loki feels it immediately, a shiver coursing through her body. She still doesn’t change shape, though. Tony figures that’s a good thing. She kinda needs her breasts at the moment.

“Okay, now try to get back to the 29th floor.”

Loki closes her eyes, but nothing happens. She opens them.

“I can’t.”

“Good, okay, that’s a good start. Now try the roof on the party floor, where the suit is. You know the—”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” she says hastily. Okay, some bad memories there. He shuts up and gives her a moment to concentrate.

Again, she doesn’t go anywhere. Tony and Bruce exchange glances of relief and excitement.

“Okay, good, this is looking good. No teleportation anywhere in the Tower.”

“I can feel it,” she says suddenly. “My seiðr. It is…not missing, per se, but it feels quiet.”

Before Tony can ask whether that’s as good news as it sounds, Astrid stirs in his arms. What starts as a few disgruntled whimpers soon peaks to cacophonous wailing when she realizes that it isn’t Loki holding her.

“Okay, okay, you want Mama? Here’s Mama.” Loki is already at his side, worry pinching her brow as she hastily takes Astrid and sets her against her shoulder.

“Shh, darling, it’s all right.” The crying doesn’t stop, and Loki’s worry deepens. “Astrid? It’s all right, dear, I’ve got you.”

Suddenly, a thought occurs to her, and the color drains from her cheeks.

“She can’t feel it.”

Tony’s about to ask what she means when he remembers her previous statement.

“Your seiðr?” he guesses, still not knowing exactly what that means, but assuming it has something to do with magic.

She nods. “And hers. She can feel its absence.”

Thankfully, Astrid does begin to quiet down after a moment. Evidently Loki’s voice is enough to comfort her even without magic. Tony, meanwhile, is still reeling at the revelation that Astrid not only has magic of her own, but can feel when it’s missing.

“Is she gonna be okay? If we keep this thing going, I mean?”

Patting Astrid gently on the back, Loki nods.

“I think she’ll have to,” she whispers. “It will be difficult at first, but it is more important that we stay hidden. If anything, this is a sign that the device works.”

Tony breathes a sigh of relief.

“We did it,” he says, and Bruce nods in agreement. Loki rocks Astrid gently, her own relief obvious to all of them.


	6. You can't start a fire without a spark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While we're all stuck at home, let's have a few tips on fighting boredom from our favorite sorcerer.

Once Stark gets his device up and running, Loki’s magic is safely concealed, and she finds herself right back where she started.

Stark Tower is a bit better than the prison cell, she supposes. There’s more space to move around, and a lot more privacy. Still, without her magic, she doesn’t have much to do besides taking care of Astrid. It doesn’t take more than a few weeks before she’s finished all the books she brought, and even a few Stark had in the guest room’s nightstand. Astrid keeps her busy enough, of course, but in those few moments where the child is asleep Loki finds herself feeling restless, desperate for something to keep her occupied.

She might have taken well to motherhood during the brief periods she had been allowed it, but that doesn’t make her a suitable housewife. She needs novelty, variety, some kind of stimulation to keep her mind occupied so she isn’t left alone to her thoughts.

_That_ is just about the opposite of what she needs right now.

Really, Loki can think of at least a dozen things she would rather be doing than standing here, staring out the window of Stark Tower and thinking about all the decisions that led her to this point. She could be exploring, for example, actually taking the time to learn about this realm when she isn’t being coerced into conquering it. For such a primitive planet, Midgard seems to have a lot to offer by way of natural beauty.

And, she thinks, perhaps not all human creations are completely worthless, either.

Of course, ideally, she wouldn’t be on this planet at all, but somewhere she can actually prepare, summoning all her power to take down Thanos herself. But she isn’t alone anymore, and joining that fight would put Astrid at too much risk. She doesn’t trust Stark enough to leave the child with him, and so her only option is to stay here, twiddling her thumbs and hoping Thanos doesn’t find a way around Stark’s defense system.

She just wishes it weren’t so _boring_.

She’s re-read two of the books she’d brought from Asgard, painted and re-painted her nails twice, and stared blankly at the refrigerator for thirty minutes before she finally decides to dig through her things, searching for anything she might have thought to take from her quarters. It is then that she finds, tucked under a pile of clothes and nearly forgotten, one of the only relics of her mother’s she’d allowed herself to take.

It’s a set of knitting needles, one skein of silky black yarn still attached.

Loki swallows the lump in her throat, trying not to think of her mother, but the memory forces its way into her thoughts. A young Loki, stumbling upon his mother’s garden, transforming himself into a little girl with long, fair hair and a silky blue dress. Frigga, smiling eyes twinkling in the moonlight, pulling her daughter into her lap and showing her how to hold the needles. Odin, finding the two of them and glaring at Frigga with a look of displeasure, coaxing Loki out of his mother’s lap and into his usual form. Their heated words overheard by a confused Loki, wondering what was so wrong with wanting to be like his mother.

Loki hadn’t tried that particular transformation for quite a while afterward.

She gently unravels the small section of fabric already attached to the needles. It doesn’t look like anything specific, likely no more than a distraction for Frigga when she needed something to occupy her hands. The thought brings a smile to Loki’s face. Like mother, like daughter, it seems.

She glances across the room at Astrid in her crib. She’s sleeping soundly, at least for the moment. Carefully, making as little noise as possible, Loki rises to her feet and slips out into the living room.

Odin isn’t here right now, and she’s free to do whatever she pleases.

—

Tony stops by a few weeks after they finish the cloaking device, and he’s not at all prepared for what he finds.

Loki’s on the couch, leather-clad legs stretched out on the coffee table, her hair pulled loosely into a bun. There’s a black mass of something in her lap, and when Tony looks closer, he realizes that it’s attached to a pair of knitting needles.

Loki, God of Mischief, SHIELD’s Public Enemy Number 1, is sitting on his couch and _knitting_.

He supposes he should probably stop being surprised by her at this point.

Loki hasn’t seemed to notice him yet, her face screwed up in concentration as she works, needles clanking together.

“Uh, hi,” Tony says lamely, and she glances up at him. She looks more put-together than he’s seen her yet. She even bothered to put on a shirt—a nice black sweater that doesn’t have any stains on it. If it weren’t for the scowl she’s currently throwing at Tony, she might look pretty nice.

“What do you want?“

Tony raises one hand in surrender, the other still holding a plainly-wrapped package. “Just stopping by, okay, please don’t stab me with those.”

Loki rolls her eyes, resuming her knitting. “Don’t worry,” she says curtly. “I’m not in the mood.”

Tony hesitates for just a moment before deciding it’s safe, and comes to sit on the couch beside her.“Are you often in the mood for stabbing people with knitting needles?”

“It varies,” she says, but her face softens a little.

Tony drums his fingers on the box in his hands. “So, do you straighten your hair with magic, or some kind of Asgardian hair grease?”

Loki’s hands stop, and she looks at him sideways. “What?”

“Well, when you came here the first time, your hair was all slicked back like a greaser or something. And straight. Kinda gross-looking, too, if I’m being—“ Loki’s glare shuts him up, and he backtracks. “It’s curly now, is what I’m saying. Is that how it looks naturally?”

Loki blinks, staring at him as if to see if he’s joking or not.

“I use magic,” she says finally, turning back to her needles. “Usually. When I have it to use.”

Tony nods. “Right. Yeah, about that.” He holds out the package. “I, uh. I got you something.”

Loki’s brow furrows, but she sets down her knitting and takes it, weighing it in her hands. “What is it?”

“It’s a gift, you have to open it to find out.” Tony sits forward, clasping his hands in his lap. “Today’s a Midgardian holiday, you’re supposed to give gifts, it’s a whole thing.”

Loki looks confused at the idea of Tony involving her in a Midgardian gift-giving tradition, and honestly, Tony isn’t completely sure why he decided to do it in the first place. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Loki picks at the wrapping, and Tony notices that she’s painted her nails. Probably with actual polish this time, considering she has no magic, and Tony suddenly wonders if nail polish is a thing on Asgard. She can’t have gotten it in the tower, can she?

She gets the package open and pulls out her gift. A sleek black tablet, Stark brand, slightly modified, the best he could come up with for someone who has no experience with Earth technology. He figures Loki’s probably bored out of her mind with no access to magic, and he can’t exactly help her with that, but he can give her something new to play with in the meantime.  
“I know you hate technology,” he says, “but it’s gotta be better than nothing. Knock yourself out.”

Loki blinks, turning the tablet over in her hands. “I—“ she mutters, at a loss for words.

“JARVIS has access to it, he can help you navigate. You can do all kinds of shit on here. Ebooks, articles about parenting, hell, you could find knitting patterns if that’s what you’re into.” She looks over at him, still caught somewhere between surprise and disbelief. “Can’t fix your hair, sadly, but if you want my opinion, it looks better this way.”

Loki doesn’t acknowledge that comment, just sets the tablet down in her lap. “Thank you, Stark,” she says cautiously.

There’s an awkward pause where neither of them is sure what’s acceptable to do next, but fortunately, it’s interrupted by the sound of Astrid crying in the next room.

Loki sighs, gathering up her knitting and the tablet and setting them on the coffee table. “She’s awake,” she announces, getting to her feet. She pauses for a moment, looking back at Tony as if she’s going to say something else, but she changes her mind and stalks off toward the bedroom.

Well, Tony thinks, at least she liked the gift.

—

The first thing Loki does with her new tablet is look up how Midgardians knit without using magic. The second thing she does is search for a Midgardian recipe to make for dinner.

Stark had made sure her pantry was well-stocked, and while it wasn’t quite the same food she was used to on Asgard, much of it was similar enough that she could work her way through it. Although cooking for herself wasn’t a skill she’d ever needed, growing up in the royal family as she had, Loki had in fact dabbled in it before. As a child, he and Thor spent quite a bit of time sneaking away to the kitchens and stealing from the cooks. While Thor was mostly interested in the food, Loki had tried to learn a little more about the art of preparing it.

And now that she has access to a seemingly infinite supply of recipes, she thinks she’s found something that will occupy her time while Astrid sleeps.

The tablet had been quite a thoughtful gift, uncharacteristically so coming from Stark. Loki isn’t sure what to make of it. Surely the fact that she bore his child didn’t erase everything that happened between them, nor her becoming the monster she’d truly been all along.

And yet, he chose to show her kindness regardless.

As she shuffles Astrid on her hip and looks down at the amount of food she’s preparing, it occurs to her that perhaps she could return the favor.

“Computer?” she says cautiously. She isn’t quite sure how the machine works, but it seems to be able to hear her.

“Please,” it responds, “call me JARVIS.”

Loki resists the urge to roll her eyes.

“JARVIS, could you tell Stark that I’ve made enough food for one more, if he’d like to join us for dinner.”

She figures it’s only fair, given that he’d bought the food in the first place.

It’s silent for a moment, and then JARVIS speaks up. “Mr. Stark seems confused, but he is on his way up.”

Loki smiles at that. She supposes it would be confusing to have your fugitive enemy offer to share her dinner with you. Then again, it’s not as though very much between them has ever quite made _sense_.

A few minutes later, Loki hears the elevator door open behind her. She doesn’t turn around, instead checking the oven unnecessarily.

“I heard you have food for me?” Stark says skeptically, leaning against the door of the kitchen.

“It’s nearly finished,” Loki confirms. She nods to the table. “Sit.”

Stark obliges, but then he notices her struggling to hold on to Astrid. “I, um, I can take her, if you don’t mind.”

She hesitates for a moment, but she remembers the look of pain on Stark’s face when he’d talked about holding his daughter, and she decides it couldn’t hurt.

“Alright,” she says, carefully handing Astrid over.

“Hey, peanut,” Stark croons, and Loki turns to hide her smile. “You don’t have a seat at the table?”

“She’s usually asleep,” Loki explains. “I haven’t spent this much time preparing dinner before.”

Stark glances over at Loki’s tablet sitting out on the counter.

“What, you discovered Recipes.com?”

“Food Network,” Loki corrects, and Stark laughs.

“Wow, that’s high class. Whatcha making?”

Instead of answering, Loki removes the pan from the oven and sets it on the table.

“Chicken parm,” Stark says approvingly. “You went Italian. Not what I expected, honestly, I’d have pegged you for a German bratwurst kinda guy. Or maybe steak.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Loki replies, irritated. She’s starting to regret the decision to invite him up here. Does Stark ever stop talking?

He seems to notice her curtness, because he switches tactics. “It looks good,” he says simply, dishing out a filet with the hand not holding Astrid. “You cook a lot on Asgard?”

She almost doesn’t answer, but in the interest of being polite, she says, “I’ve dabbled.”

Stark nods. “I’m a fan,” he says, cutting his chicken carefully with one hand. “Some people would have a personal chef, but I’d just as soon do it myself. Better chance I’ll get something I like.”

Loki nods. That she does understand.

“Asgardians cook everything in fat,” she says, and Stark laughs. She bites back a smile.

“Hate to break it to you, Lokes, but Earth isn’t much better. Not this country at least.”

Loki stiffens at the nickname. Have they really gotten that familiar? Or is that just how Stark is?

“Yes, well, thankfully I have the cuisine of many others at my fingertips,” she says, cutting off a piece of chicken.

“You’re welcome,” Stark replies with a smirk.

They eat in silence for a moment, Loki examining the scene before her. Stark looks shockingly comfortable, balancing Astrid on one knee as he eats.

“Midgard has a great many countries,” she says suddenly, surprising herself. “There’s plenty to choose from.”

“Oh yeah, Earth has got variety down to a science.” Stark looks up at her with curiosity. “Is Asgard not the same way?”

And so they spend the rest of the meal talking, comparing their planets with little quips and comments about the things that they dislike. Loki learns that Stark enjoys his country’s greasy food, but he suspects Loki will take more to Mediterranean cuisine, which Loki makes a mental note to look up. Stark finds it appalling that Asgardians consider themselves so technologically advanced when they still cook most of their food in fire-heated cauldrons. Loki can’t really debate that one—Stark’s oven seems quite useful from where she’s standing.

They talk for so long that it takes Loki by surprise when Astrid begins to fuss for seemingly no reason. She glances at the clock on the oven and realizes that it’s time for her evening feeding.

“Oh, darling,” she mutters, getting to her feet and retrieving Astrid from Stark’s lap. She lifts up her shirt, holding Astrid to her chest and waiting for her to latch on.

She glances up at Stark, who is very carefully not reacting to her bare chest. She smirks.

“You know, for a man with such a reputation for seducing women, you seem to have quite the objection to seeing my breasts.”

Stark raises his eyebrows, and then, once he’s sure she’s watching, takes a very deliberate look down her entire frame. He fixes her with a smirk, as if to say _Your move,_ and gathers up his dishes, turning his back to her as he begins washing them.

She allows herself a moment to look over Stark while his back is turned. It’s only fair, after all.


	7. You and me and a flame make three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone's enjoying their social distancing! Let's all watch the residents of Stark Tower do the exact opposite of that and have a playdate.

Once Loki starts inviting Tony up for dinner, he decides to push his luck and start stopping in on his own.

He gets off the elevator one afternoon to find Loki lying down on the couch, her tablet in her lap and Astrid curled up on her bare chest. Loki looks to be pretty soundly asleep. Astrid, on the other hand, stirs as soon as Tony walks in, squirming and rolling over until she can see him.

“Hey kiddo,” he whispers, smiling. Astrid returns it. While she clearly prefers her mother, she’s still happy to see Tony when he stops by. She raises her arms, attempting to sit up on Loki’s chest. Loki doesn’t stir, so Tony very carefully lifts Astrid up.

“Let’s let your mama get some sleep, huh?” he whispers.

“Mama,” Astrid repeats. She can’t quite talk yet, but there are some sounds she’s able to make when prompted.

“Good, yeah, that’s right.” Tony carries her away quickly, doing his best to let Loki sleep. She looks like she needs it.

He takes Astrid back into the kitchen, which isn’t fully closed off but still allows them to make some noise without being heard. She holds on to his shoulder, and he’s momentarily amazed by how quickly she’s grown.

“You’re getting big, squirt,” he remarks aloud, because the silence is starting to drive him crazy. He sets her down on the counter, and she giggles. He knows one of these drawers has some of her toys in it, so he checks all of them looking for something to keep her entertained. Why Loki decided to keep baby toys in the kitchen is honestly beyond him, but he’s just glad she actually decided to use the stuff he bought.

Finally, he finds a set of blocks tucked into the back of one of the drawers. “Hey,” he says, pulling them out. “Look what I found!” Astrid squeals with delight, and he quickly shushes her, even though he doubts she can understand. “Quiet, now, okay, don’t want to wake up Mama.”

He sets the blocks out in front of her, and she immediately grabs one and tosses it on the floor.

“Hey!” He bends down to pick it up, and waves it in her face. “No. No throwing. Like this, see?”

He demonstrates stacking three of the blocks. Astrid looks at the tower for a second, then pushes all three off of the counter.

She laughs as he picks them up again. He wags a finger at her. “No,” he says. “Stack them, don’t throw them.”

He sets two down and hands the third to her. Keeping one hand on her arm, he guides her to set it down on top.

“There you go,” he says, smiling. “Look at that. You made something. Good for you.”

Astrid stares at the blocks for a moment, and her face breaks into a smile, followed by an incoherent babbling that Tony would swear sounds like she’s proud.

—

When Loki wakes up after a nap that she hadn’t intended to take, she’s shocked to find that Astrid is no longer lying on her chest.

Her moment of panic subsides quickly as she hears a faint babbling from the next room, followed by Stark’s voice. Oh, right. Of course he’d taken her.

Having Stark help her in caring for the child had not been part of her plan in coming here, but she had been quickly reminded of how much work it is to look after an infant, especially without magic. When Stark expressed an interest in helping, it was hard for her to say no. Besides, he’s good with Astrid, better than she’d expected.

She finds the two of them in the kitchen, Stark’s back to her as she leans against the doorway, watching them play for a moment with a faint smile. Astrid notices Loki first, babbling excitedly, and Stark turns around to follow her gaze.

“Hey, Mama’s awake,” Stark says, shooting Loki a grin. She’s still smiling, very faintly but genuinely, and she stands up from where she was leaning against the doorway to walk over and pick Astrid up.

“How long was I asleep?”

“I’m not sure,” he says. “She was already done nursing when I got up here.”

Loki nods, absentmindedly stroking Astrid’s hair. “Thank you for watching her,” she adds, remembering herself.

“Any time,” Stark says dismissively.

It’s silent for a moment as he packs away the blocks.

“She’s getting big now,” he notes, nodding to Astrid. Loki smiles.

“Yes, she’s coming up on a year old.”

“Whoa, wait, seriously?” Stark turns back to face them. ”One year? When?”

Loki thinks about it. She hadn’t been paying very close attention to the date, but she has something of an idea. “January 27th, by your calendar.”

“Wow. That’s, what, two weeks?”

“Two and a half, Sir,” JARVIS chimes in helpfully.

“Two and a half weeks, then,” Loki muses.

“We should have a party.”

Loki frowns. She isn’t sure what business an infant would have at one of Stark’s parties.

“What?”

“For her birthday. Wait, do you not do birthday parties on Asgard?”

Loki shakes her head.

“Oh my god. Okay, we are totally having a party. Well, the three of us, anyway. Maybe Shanta. Actually, yeah, the two of them should meet at some point, she—”

Loki holds up her hand to stop him before his train of thought derails entirely. “What exactly would this party entail?”

Stark shrugs. “Cake. Presents. Baby’s first social event, I don’t know, it doesn’t have to be a big thing, it’s just, you know. It’s what people do.”

Loki nods slowly. It’s another one of those Earth traditions she’s slowly becoming used to. And it sounds like it’s important to Stark.

“Perhaps we could do something small.”

“Yeah.” He grins, and something about that makes her feel a sense of pride. “Absolutely, just something little with the three of us and the kids. I can get a cake, get her some gifts to open—she’s gonna need new toys soon, right? As she gets older?”

“I should think so.” Loki pauses, then remembers something. “I was thinking of gifting her a set of runestones.”

“Okay, yeah, you should do that.” Stark clearly doesn’t know what that means, but he doesn’t ask. “I can start putting together a list, for my end. I’ll, uh. I can go get started on that now.”

He leaves hastily before Loki can think to ask him what the rush is. He’s doubtlessly running to his workshop, ready to put together a massive online order for baby toys. She laughs silently to herself.

The idea of giving gifts to an infant is strange to her, and especially of having the practice is relegated to a single day of celebration. Still, when she fled Asgard with Astrid, she had picked up a few things from her quarters, and among them had been a set of beginners’ runestones. It was a set gifted to Loki as a boy, made by Frigga herself, and it seemed only reasonable that it be passed down to Loki’s own child. She’s far too young to make use of them now, but if they’re going to be giving gifts, Loki wants to have something to give.

The child in question begins to fuss, and Loki rocks her gently. Once she’s sure Stark has left their floor, she begins to sing softly in a language she couldn’t name. It’s a very old song, one she most likely learned from her mother. It soothes Astrid, and she gradually quiets down.

“Hush, darling,” Loki whispers, pressing a kiss to her child’s head. “Mama’s here.”

— 

Shanta, a child essentially raised by SHIELD with no siblings and very few other children to interact with, is absolutely ecstatic at the prospect of meeting someone younger than her.

“We’re having a birthday party!” she yelps excitedly to Bruce at least every ten minutes. Bruce, ever the patient one, just smiles and nods.

“It’s only a few days away now,” he reminds Shanta, who squeals.

“Should we get her a present? What does a one-year-old even like?”

“Breasts,” Tony quips from across the lab, taking a swig of his coffee. Bruce rolls his eyes.

“She’s going to start talking soon,” Bruce replies, and damn, is that a terrifying thought. “She’d probably like a book for Tony to read to her, so she can learn new words.”

Shanta looks over at Tony. “I can’t believe you’re a dad.” She grins, a wide, toothy smile.

“Neither can I, kid,” Tony mumbles over his coffee mug.

After entirely too much time spent trying to think of a convincing lie to tell Shanta, they finally decided on just telling her the truth. The kid was a spy once. ‘Don’t tell anyone at SHIELD that Tony has a baby’ can’t be too difficult of a secret for her to keep. Besides, it’s worth it to give her someone to play with.

“What’s her mom like?” Shanta wonders.

Okay, they’d told her _some_ of the truth. Tony thought the philosophical discussions of Loki’s moral ambiguity might be a bit much for a ten-year-old, so they’d pulled together an alter ego that Loki could work with for the time being. Still a mage hiding her magic with Tony’s tech, but with a less…questionable past.

“Lori? Oh, she’s a piece of work.” Tony catches Bruce hiding a smile behind his microscope. “She’s crazy. Just absolutely insane.” He looks at Shanta with a glint in his eye. “You’ll love her.”

Shanta giggles. Tony lowers his voice.

“Don’t tell him I told you, but your dad is scared of her.”

Shanta’s eyes widen. “No way.”

Tony nods. “Yup.”

“Dad’s not scared of anything!” Shanta isn’t that great at whispering, but Bruce plays along, trying to look busy like he can’t hear them.

“Oh, he’s not scared of much, but Lori’s pretty scary when she wants to be.”

“I bet the Hulk could beat her up.”

Tony grins.

“I bet he could too,” he says with a wink. Across the room, Bruce stifles a laugh.

“What are you two whispering about over there?” he mock-shouts, and Shanta bursts into a fit of giggles.

“Nothing!” She tries to wink at Tony, almost succeeding, and ducks under the table to return to her dad.

“Okay, well, if it’s ‘nothing’ then why don’t you go upstairs and get the table set for dinner?”

“Okay,” she says with a pout. “Is Tony coming?”

“Tony’s having dinner with Lori and Astrid,” Bruce reminds her.

“We’ll all have dinner together soon, don’t worry,” Tony says, patting the kid on the shoulder.

She scurries off, and once she’s disappeared, Bruce leans over to Tony.

“You sure it’s a good idea for me and Loki to hang out?” he whispers.

Tony sighs. He isn’t sure, not really, but he’s feeling a lot better about it than he did when Loki first got here.

“She agreed to it,” he says. “We both think it’s good for Astrid. I’m sure she’ll behave.”

Bruce nods thoughtfully.

“I’ll be okay, I think.” He gives Tony a small smile. “You two seem to be getting along, so that’s something.”

It’s definitely _something_, but Tony isn’t sure what to say about it beyond that.

“Shanta would be crushed if you weren’t there,” he points out, and Bruce laughs.

“No, that’s true. She’s dying to meet your baby.“ He pauses, then adds, “I’d like to see her again, too.”

Tony smiles. “Yeah, I think that’d be nice.”

—

Bruce and Shanta end up picking out a couple of books as a birthday gift for Astrid. Tony orders pretty much every recommended toy for a one-year-old that JARVIS can find and learns how to make an applesauce cake after reading that a normal birthday cake isn’t recommended for an infant. (He does also make a chocolate one for the rest of them, because hey, cake.) Between the gifts and the baking, he hardly sees Loki for the few days leading up to the party. The few times he stops by their floor, she’s in her room with the door closed, and even though she’s his guest he knows better than to try crossing that line.

Finally, the day of the party arrives, and Tony piles into the elevator with Bruce and Shanta, arms laden with hastily-wrapped gifts, homemade cakes, and assorted party snacks.

He’s relieved to see that Loki’s expecting them, actually fully dressed for once in a relatively nice tunic and leggings. She even looks to have put on a bra. She’s currently sitting cross-legged on the floor with Astrid sitting up in front of her, a series of black decorative rocks spread out between them.

“Started on gifts without us?”

Tony jumps right into it, setting down the cake and snacks on the coffee table while Bruce hangs back for the moment. Loki tenses up when she notices Bruce, but she doesn’t say anything. Tony peers over her shoulder at the stones. There’s about a dozen of them, obsidian-like orbs with bright gold symbols carved into them, all placed very carefully so that they won’t touch each other. Tony doesn’t have a clue what the symbols mean or what they’re for.

Loki must sense his confusion, because she reaches for one of the stones and lifts it up to show him. “Touch it.”

He obliges, hesitantly laying three fingers on the face of the stone. He pulls back immediately.

“Ow, Jesus!”

Loki smirks, pulling it back. She shows it to Astrid. “Fire,” she explains, enunciating clearly.

Astrid giggles, the little traitor.

“So what are they?” Shanta has joined them now, kneeling on the ground next to Astrid and examining the stones. Bruce stands behind her, still wary of Loki but curious about what’s going on.

“They are a reference set for young mages,” Loki explains, setting the fire stone back in its place. “Certain types of magic require the use of runes. These stones are enchanted to represent what the runes mean.”

“So the symbol on the hot one means fire?” Bruce is fully engaged now, crouching down behind Shanta. It’s kind of hilarious, actually, all of them gathered around Loki to learn about magic. What the hell, it’s not a bad way to spend Astrid’s birthday. Tony lowers himself down to join the circle opposite Bruce.

Loki nods. She picks up another stone, holding it out to Bruce. When he hesitates, she says, “This one is water.”

Bruce touches it, eyes widening. “It’s wet.”

Loki smiles lightly as she places the stone back in its place.

“Wait, but.” Bruce stares at his hand, rubbing his fingers together. “It’s not…really wet?”

“Nor will the fire stone burn you.” Loki touches another stone contemplatively. “They possess a rather weak magic, meant only to be felt by the one handling them. It doesn’t affect the world around it.”

Astrid reaches out for the stone Loki is touching. She pulls her hand back.

“Easy, darling,” Loki reassures her. She guides Astrid’s hand back to the stone. “It won’t hurt you.”

Shanta moves to touch the stone as well, gasping a little as she makes contact.

“It’s electric,” she whispers in awe.

“Lightning,” Loki confirms.

“Wait,” Tony interrupts, his mind reeling. “Hold on. We’ve got the cloaking device running 24/7 here. How did you make these with no magic?”

“I didn’t.” Loki stares at the floor, tracing one of the symbols with her fingertips. “They were made for me when I was a child.”

Tony can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it, so he doesn’t press the issue. Still, he’s absolutely dying to know more about what his cloaking device does and doesn’t work on. Loki can’t shapeshift, but she can maintain whatever form she changed to before it was turned on. She can’t enchant a stone, but a stone that’s already enchanted stays enchanted. Yet the magic Loki carries within her is snuffed out to the point that neither Astrid nor Thanos can detect it? There has to be some kind of logic there, but it’s so far out of his depth that he’s not even sure where to start.

“Alright,” Tony says, pulling himself out of his thoughts. “Not sure how our gifts are supposed to follow that, but hey, words and shapes and all that have got to be at least half as important as runes.”

He reaches for one of the wrapped parcels that Bruce had set down next to the cake. Now it’s their turn to shine.

They give Astrid her human gifts, with Loki helping her unwrap each of them. After the magic lesson, Bruce relaxes a bit, and he and Loki settle into an acceptably civil coexistence for the remainder of the evening. Shanta is completely enamored with Astrid, sitting right beside her as she opens each of her gifts and volunteering to play with each of the new toys to demonstrate them.

“Now look, see, this is a puzzle.” Shanta holds up a piece of the animal puzzle Tony had bought. Astrid grabs it from her and puts it in her mouth. “No, stop, don’t do that. It goes here, see?” She takes it back and makes a big show of putting the piece in the slot where it belongs. Astrid runs a few pudgy fingers over the edge of the piece, and Shanta grins.

The cake comes out soon after, and Tony profoundly embarrasses himself trying to get Astrid to eat it. He finally gives up, and the rest of them all dig in to the chocolate one, which Loki finishes off about half of by herself. Eventually they wind up on the couch, Astrid asleep in Loki’s lap, Bruce and Shanta sharing a bag of chips, and Tony spread out in the middle of them all.

“Should we put on a movie or something?“ Bruce suggests.

“Ooh, let’s show Astrid a Disney movie!” Shanta turns to Tony. “What about _The Lion King_?”

“Kind of violent for a baby, don’t ya think?” Tony reaches across Bruce and steals a handful of chips.

“She’s not even awake,” Loki points out. “I don’t think she cares.”

“Fine then, what do you want to watch, Maleficent?” Loki narrows her eyes at the nickname, but she clearly doesn’t know what it means, so she doesn’t comment.

“_The Lion King_ sounds interesting.”

“You’ve never seen it?!”

Tony and Bruce had told Shanta that Loki wasn’t from around here, but they’d been a little intentionally vague on the specifics. They exchange nervous glances, silently working through how best to explain that a sorcerer from another planet probably isn’t up to date on most Disney films, but Loki interrupts before they can say anything.

“I’m afraid my classic film knowledge is a bit lacking.” She looks over at Tony with an amused grin. ”Stark reminds me of this frequently.”

Tony assumes she’s referring to his constant barrage of pop culture references that inevitably go over her head, since as far as he can remember he doesn’t think he’s ever directly made fun of Loki for her lack of film knowledge. The same can’t be said for Steve, of course, but that’s beside the point.

“Okay, well we’re definitely watching that then. JARVIS?”

Shanta, in true Gen Z fashion, has become well-acquainted with the AI. He won’t let her do anything Tony hasn’t allowed her access to, of course, but he’s a good sport about changing the TV channel and Googling things for her when she asks.

“Queueing up _The Lion King_ now, Miss Banner.”

JARVIS also decides to dim the lights for that authentic movie night experience. Loki props her feet up on the coffee table, settling Astrid in her lap, and just like that the five of them settle in to watch The Lion King with chips and cake. It’s all horribly domestic, and Tony can’t help but smile. This is where his life is now, and if he’s being perfectly honest, it’s not all that bad.

He falls asleep somewhere around “Can You Feel The Love Tonight,” and if he ends up slumped over with his head resting on Loki’s shoulder, well, she doesn’t say anything about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea for the runestones was shamelessly lifted from [Blame It On The Bard,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15323382) an incredible fic with a system of magic that's so unique and interesting that I had to include part of it in this little universe.


	8. The walls are building all around my feet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left a comment! Here's some more Astrid fluff for y'all :)

A week after the party, Tony shows up on the 29th floor to find Loki covered in mashed carrots, holding a squirming Astrid and looking almost as terrifying as she’d been during the Battle of New York.

“Um,” he says as he steps out of the elevator, shrinking under Loki’s murderous gaze.

“Unless you intend to help,” she says through gritted teeth, “please just go away.”

Tony fights the urge to do exactly that, and instead hurries over to take Astrid from Loki.

Her distressed whimpers turn into full-on wails as soon as Tony takes her from her mother’s arms. Loki seems unconcerned, flopping back against the couch with the dish of carrots still in her hands. Baby food, Tony realizes. And it looks like Loki had made it herself.

“What’s going on?” he asks cautiously. Up until now, Loki had been fine with breastfeeding. Tony figured she’d have to wean eventually, but he hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.

“Astrid is not taking well to solid foods,” Loki grumbles. “As difficult as it was to get her to begin nursing with me, it seems almost impossible to get her to stop.“

Astrid struggles in Tony’s arms, still wailing, and he tries his best to soothe her.

“Shh, honey, it’s okay. It’s alright, see, Mama’s got food for you, okay? It’s good, carrots are good.”

He takes a seat beside Loki, holding Astrid’s head steady. Loki offers her a spoonful. She doesn’t take it.

“She wants to nurse,” says Loki exasperatedly.

“You think it’s too early to start her on solid food?”

Tony really has no idea how any of this works, so he defers to Loki’s judgment on that.

“It shouldn’t be,” she mutters, adjusting herself to sit facing Tony and Astrid. “She’s old enough. And she’s eaten food before, just not regularly.”

Tony remembers the applesauce cake he’d made, and suddenly a thought occurs to him.

“She wouldn’t eat the cake I fed her,” he says. “But she ate it when she grabbed it herself.”

Loki frowns. “You think she wants to feed herself?”

“I think it’s worth a shot.”

Loki glances down at the bowl of mashed carrots, half of it now on her shirt.

“Let her make a mess,” Tony says with a wave of his hand. “We’ll clean up later.”

That seems to be good enough for Loki. She shrugs and holds out the spoon to Astrid. Astrid fusses a little, but she eventually realizes she’s supposed to take it and clumsily wraps her fist around the handle. She doesn’t bring it to her mouth, unlike just about everything else she’s ever grabbed—instead she waves it around, flinging mashed carrots all over the place.

“No, darling,” Loki groans.

“Relax,” Tony offers. “I think you’re making her nervous. She’ll get there when she’s ready.”

Loki glares at him, but she doesn’t argue.

Sure enough, after a second of flinging the spoon around, Astrid does finally stick it in her mouth. She only gets a small bite of actual carrot, but it’s better than nothing.

“There you go,” Tony says with a gentle smile. “Good, that’s good.”

With Tony there to help, Loki relaxes a little, and that seems to calm Astrid down. They make a game of it, playing with the spoon and letting Astrid feed herself on her own time, sometimes with her fingers. They’re all a mess by the time the bowl is empty, but Astrid is fed, and Loki looks visibly relieved.

“There you go, see? Not bad at all.” He ruffles Astrid’s hair, grinning at the sight of her smiling. “I know Mama’s breasts are great, but you can’t have them forever.”

He sneaks a sideways glance at Loki, who tries and fails to hide her amused grin.

Tony gets to his feet, hauling Astrid up with him. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he says, heading for the kitchen.

Loki takes a second to follow them, and when Tony glances up from the sink, she looks exhausted.

“I’ve been trying to do that all afternoon,” she says wearily.

Tony isn’t sure what to say to that. “You’re welcome,” he mutters, wiping down Astrid’s face with a wet cloth.

Loki strides over to the counter, leaning against it opposite Tony. “She’ll need to eat again in a few hours,” she warns.

“Eat food, or breastfeed?”

“Breastfeed, probably.” She sighs, closing her eyes. “This is going to take a while.”

—

Loathe as she is to admit it, Loki is very grateful for Stark right now.

Between holding Astrid still and trying to feed her mashed-up food from a bowl, she simply doesn’t have enough hands to do feedings by herself. Add to that the stress of Astrid refusing to eat and the mess of letting her play with her food, and Loki faces a real risk of losing her mind should she continue to go it alone. Thankfully, though, once Stark had realized she was struggling, he showed no problem sticking around through the initial weaning process.

“Do you think we should try giving her something a little less messy?” Stark grumbles, wiping a glob of mashed peas from his face. “Finger food or something?”

Astrid giggles, banging her fists on the tray of her high chair. Stark had insisted on ordering the chair after he’d struggled to clean up the couch by himself, and Loki has to admit it was a good idea. It’s a hell of a lot easier to clean than the upholstery.

“I could make some chicken for dinner,” Loki offers.

They’ve got Astrid down to about five meals a day, breastfeeding only first thing in the morning and just before bed. Loki can already tell her nighttime feeding is going to be the hardest to wean her from, considering she’s become so accustomed to falling asleep at her mother’s breast. Truthfully, Loki might even be convinced to continue it if she weren’t so weary of this form.

The novelty of Loki’s female body had worn off months ago, and now she mostly considers it a nuisance. It’s not often she goes this long without the ability to shift. With no access to magic and limited resources to adjust her appearance, Loki feels uncomfortably trapped in a body that doesn’t quite feel right anymore.

“Chicken sounds good,” Tony says, bringing Loki back to the matter at hand. “What do you think, kiddo?”

Astrid responds by touching Tony’s cheek and leaving behind another glob of peas.

“Okay, I’m gonna assume that’s a yes. Now come on, this is for you, not dad. Eat some.”

The peas are gone faster than expected, now that Astrid has gotten the hang of eating her own food. But Loki, Tony, and the high chair are all an absolute mess afterwards, which makes Loki think maybe chicken isn’t a bad idea.

She peels off her shirt, and by now, Tony doesn’t even flinch. He just watches as she wets a few paper towels and gets to work wiping off Astrid’s face.

“So messy,” she mutters. “Clearly you take after your father.”

Tony slaps a hand to his chest, feigning offense. “_Rude_,” he says. Loki grins as she finishes cleaning Astrid up.

“Have you _been_ in your workshop lately?”

“Actually, no, I’ve been up here feeding this little monster.” Astrid laughs aloud, and Loki turns to see Tony pinching her cheek with an adoring grin. She smiles in spite of herself.

It had surprised Loki at first how good Stark was with Astrid. She never would have expected him to be a competent parent, especially now that she’s seen firsthand how much trouble he has even taking care of himself. Some days she wonders if he would manage to eat at all were she not to invite him for dinner almost every night.

And yet…his involvement in Astrid’s life has already gone so far beyond giving her a place to live and buying her things.

Loki washes her hands and flops down in the seat opposite Stark. He’s playing some sort of game with her, covering her eyes and making faces while she laughs.

“She’s going to need a nap soon,” Loki reminds him, her lip curling in a soft smile.

Stark glances over at her. “Looks like you are, too.”

Loki can’t argue with that.

“I shouldn’t,” she argues halfheartedly. “In case she wakes up.”

“I’ll watch her,” Stark says like it’s no big deal.

Loki blinks. “Are you sure?”

“Why not?” He ruffles Astrid’s hair. “Come on, I’ll take care of it. Go get some sleep.”

She hesitates to leave Astrid alone that long, but her exhaustion definitely outweighs her nerves. “All right,” she relents, pulling herself up to her feet. Astrid naps well enough. Stark ought to be fine.

She falls asleep almost as soon as she lands in bed, not even stirring when Stark enters to put Astrid down.

Thank the Norns he’s here.

—

Weaning Astrid takes a little bit longer than they expected, but after a couple of months, she’s finally able to go to sleep without breastfeeding.

Tony sneaks Loki down to the lab where their cloaking device is hidden, shutting it down long enough for Loki to shift back to his male form.

“Better?” Tony asks, and Loki nods, stretching his arms experimentally.

“Much.”

They hurry back to the 29th floor, where Shanta is helping Astrid put together one of her puzzles. Tony settles down on the floor beside her, picking up one of the pieces.

“Now where do you suppose this goes?”

They play with the puzzle for a little while as Loki disappears into the kitchen. Shanta fills Tony in on what he missed while they were downstairs—not much, really, just Astrid placing a few pieces with help from her new best friend—and then she glances back to the kitchen before lowering her voice.

“Lori looks different,” she whispers. Tony just shrugs.

“She’s a shapeshifter,” he says instinctively, then frowns and adds, “or...he.”

Shanta raises an eyebrow. “They?”

Tony tries to imagine how Loki would react to being called a ‘they,’ and none of the scenarios he’s able to come up with are particularly good.

“He, I think,” Tony says in a low voice. “For now, at least.”

Shanta just shrugs. “Whatever. I gotta go. I have to go help dad set the table.”

Tony grins, grateful for the change of topic. “Good girl,” he says, patting her on the shoulder. “Go help your dad. See, Astrid, take notes—that’s a good kid right there.”

Shanta rolls her eyes, smiling. “Goodnight, Tony.”

Tony chuckles as he watches Shanta flounce over to the elevator, and once she’s gone, Astrid crawls into his lap.

“Hey, kiddo,” he mutters, clutching her to his side and awkwardly getting to his feet.

He carries Astrid into the kitchen, where Loki is poring over a recipe on his tablet. He looks much more lively than usual, and Tony wonders how much of that is due to his change in form.

“What’s for dinner, Lokes?” Tony calls out.

“Mushroom risotto,” Loki mumbles, not turning around to look at them.

“Ro. Roto.”

“Risotto,” Loki repeats more clearly, and Tony can’t see, but he’s pretty sure he’s smiling.

“Sounds yummy, doesn’t it?” Tony bounces Astrid, and she laughs. “With _mushrooms_. Can you say ‘mushroom’?”

“Mama.”

“Okay, close enough.” He sets her down in her high chair and ruffles her hair. “Mama’s cooking now. He’ll be done soon.”

It occurs to Tony that with Loki being male again, calling him _Mama_ doesn’t really make sense. Still, it’s what Astrid knows, so maybe they should stick with it to avoid confusing her. He realizes he isn’t sure what exactly Loki wants to be called and when, but he doesn’t think they’re at the point where he can ask and get much more than a glare and possibly something thrown at him. They might be almost-friends, but Loki’s still pretty touchy. So he sticks with the name Astrid knows for now and hopes that Loki will correct him if he feels the need.

“I’m nearly finished,” Loki confirms, not addressing the pronoun issue at all. His saucepan is bubbling on the stove, and it smells divine. It seems that since Tony gave him the tablet, Loki has channeled his unused talents for magic into learning how to cook, and the results do not disappoint.

He serves up a generous portion of risotto, enough for one human and one god, plus a dish of plain rice with a few mushrooms for Astrid. The adults take turns feeding her, as that’s still a monumental undertaking at this point and the division of labor makes it so much less stressful.

“Open up,” Tony prompts, offering a spoonful to Astrid. She keeps her mouth closed. “Come on, I know you’re hungry, and the milk factory’s closed for business. Open.“

Loki watches him with an amused smirk, taking his turn to eat for himself. Tony rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, hilarious, dad struggling with dinner time. I’d like to see you try it.”

Loki shakes his head, still smiling. “Oh no, surely you can handle things yourself.”

Tony sighs. He goes back to making faces at Astrid in an attempt to get her to eat. Loki’s teasing subsides, and when Tony sneaks a glance back after Astrid finally takes a bite, he’s wearing a smile that looks less mischievous and more…fond.

“Look, I know you want to feed yourself, but you’ll make a mess.”

Astrid responds by sticking her hand into her bowl of rice.

“Okay, fine.” Tony sets the spoon down. “Suit yourself.”

Loki takes a bite, trying to hide his grin.

Once Tony gives up and lets Astrid take the lead, the three of them enjoy a nice family dinner together, talking and laughing about how big Astrid is getting and what her next words will be and would she like to visit Tony’s workshop sometime, because that would be a great experience for her as long as no one would see them. They’d be the picture-perfect American family if it weren’t for, well, everything about them.

Still, Tony thinks as he watches Loki’s eyes crinkle with laughter at one of his quips, there are worse ways to spend an evening.


	9. I hope that everybody can find a little flame

Just when life at Stark Tower is starting to feel almost normal, the Avengers come back, and things get awkward.

It’s not all of them, not all at once. In fact, Tony doesn’t even realize it’s started happening until one night when he walks into Bruce’s kitchen and finds him sitting on the counter, pants on the floor and legs wrapped around a set of broad shoulders that turn out to belong to one Clint Barton.

“What the fuck?!” Clint yelps, and Tony thanks his lucky stars that he recovers his mental faculties in time to look away before Clint has a chance to move.

“Tony, Jesus, have you heard of knocking?” Bruce honestly sounds more annoyed than surprised, which Tony supposes is fair.

“I come down here all the time, you know this!” Tony hastily covers his face with his hand as he hears Bruce scrambling to get his pants back on. ”Couldn’t you put a sock on the door or something?”

He doesn’t have to look to know that Bruce is rolling his eyes.

“Stark, how old are you?”

Tony’s about to comment that Clint could at least use his first name if he’s going to make Tony witness the destruction of him roommate’s virtue, but Bruce cuts him off by shushing them both.

“You’re going to wake Shanta,” he warns with all the ferocity of a concerned parent. That shuts them both up immediately.

Tony very cautiously withdraws his hand from his eyes. “Alright,” he whispers. “I’m gonna steal the espresso powder I came down here for, and then I’m gonna leave and pretend I didn’t just see you defiling my roommate on _my_ granite countertops.”

This time, he does see Bruce roll his eyes.

“Tony, it’s after midnight,” he chastises halfheartedly. “And by the way, I’m not some blushing vir—”

“Already pretending!” Tony cuts him off, mostly just to mess with him.

Seriously, _Clint Barton_? Tony hadn’t even known Bruce was into guys. He’ll definitely have to ask him about that one later. Not to mention, of all the guys on the team that Bruce could’ve picked, Tony would have guessed he’d go for _Thor_ over that snarky fucker. At least Thor seemed like he had a bit of a softer side.

Tony retrieves the espresso powder and makes the “I’m watching you” sign at Clint as he leaves. Clint replies with something in sign language that he doesn’t understand, but it makes Bruce shake his head at both of them as Tony steps onto the elevator with a wink.

—

The next day, Tony waits until Bruce turns up in the lab by himself and corners him.

“So, you and Barton,” he says casually, leaning against one of the tables that doesn’t have wheels on it.

He can almost hear Bruce rolling his eyes. “There’s a reason I didn’t tell anyone, Tony.”

“Come on, why not? I told you about my bastard child with Loki.”

“I didn’t ask to know about that.”

Bruce meets his eyes, his withering look still not quite selling the fact that he’s really upset.

“Brucie bear,” Tony whines, sticking out his lower lip in an exaggerated pout. “Secrets don’t make friends.”

Bruce just shakes his head.

“So is he living here now?” Tony pushes himself up and lazily paces the lab. “Or just a weekend booty call kind of thing?”

“_No_,” Bruce says sternly. “Neither of those. I wouldn’t bring someone to live here without asking you.”

“But you’d ask him if I said yes?” Tony goes to stand in front of Bruce. “How serious is this thing?”

Bruce looks a little flustered, and Tony figures he shouldn’t pry if the thing with Barton was supposed to be a secret, but he can’t help himself.

“We’ve…discussed the idea of telling you all,” he says finally. “I didn’t want things to get weird, but it is kind of serious, and obviously there was the possibility of someone finding out now that he's started spending more time here...”

“How long has this been a thing?”

Bruce does a little mental math. “A year and a half, give or take?”

Tony’s eyes widen. “And you weren’t going to tell me?”

“I would have!” Bruce looks defensive, and Tony does a quick once-over to make sure Bruce isn’t at risk of Hulking out. It’s been a long time since his last unprompted incident, but still. “I…look, there are…we've had bigger things to worry about.”

“Bigger than Loki giving birth to my child? Come on, Bruce. We have no secrets.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “And how many people have you told about that, exactly?”

Images of Rhodey, Pepper, Happy, and the rest of the Avengers meeting Astrid suddenly pop up in Tony’s mind. None of them are particularly positive. He shrugs.

“I told you,” he counters, and Bruce sighs, hesitating for a moment.

“Clint is in the process of adopting a child.”

Well _that_ wasn’t what he expected.

“What?”

“She’s his niece," Bruce explains. "Clint's brother is kind of…well, he’s a bit of a mess, really. He got arrested a few months back, and the kid’s mom is…not great.” Bruce rubs his hands together uncomfortably. “She’s deaf. Clint’s niece. And her mom doesn’t like that. So Clint is thinking about taking her.”

Tony blinks. “Well, yeah, that makes sense.”

“That’s what I said! I think it would be good for both of them, I’m just…he's going to have to move, no matter what, and we've talked about him coming here, but I'm just not—”

“Are you kidding me?” Tony interrupts with an incredulous laugh. "Brucie bear, I extended the invitation to everyone, you know that. And that includes various offspring."

“Well, I get that part. I just mean…” Bruce sighs. “Shanta’s met Clint, but only a few times. And I haven’t even learned to sign yet. It just feels like a big step, is all."

Tony nods. "It's up to you," he says finally. "But they're both welcome here any time."

Bruce finally smiles. “Thanks, Tony,” he says, and Tony grins back.

“Don’t mention it,” he says, clapping Bruce on the shoulder. “Just tell your boyfriend no sniping anyone in the house.”

—

Bruce and Clint talk it over, and apparently they manage to work past whatever hangups Bruce was having, because they decide to move Clint and his new daughter straight in to Bruce's quarters.

Beth is about six and a half, shy at first only because she struggles to communicate with them all. She hadn’t been born deaf, apparently, but Clint had stressed to everyone the importance of using sign language rather than trying to speak with her. When Clint introduced her to Tony, she had nervously spelled out her name and signed _Nice to meet you_.

_Hi B-E-T-H_, Tony signs back, copying the motions Bruce had showed him earlier. _Welcome home_.

“Tony is Iron Man,” Clint says, spelling it out and then making some gesture that Tony guesses is a cross between the sign for ‘iron’ and the sign for ‘man’.

_You make suits_, Beth signs, and Tony grins.

_Yes_, he replies. _I make things_.

“I’m a mechanic,” he adds out loud, because his broken sign language kind of makes him feel like an idiot.

“I can translate for you,” Clint says quietly. “Just talk like you would normally.”

Tony nods. His experience with deaf people is pretty much limited to occasionally noticing the interpreters at some of his public appearances, so he really has no idea what the etiquette is here.

“Clint tells me you like to dance,” he says, glancing over as Clint signs along. “That’s pretty cool.”

Beth flashes him a wide, toothy grin. Her hands start flying.

“I do ballet and hip-hop,” Clint translates. “I used to take classes but I had to quit ‘cause my teacher didn’t know how a Deaf kid could dance. But Clint’s friend Natasha said she’s gonna teach me!”

Tony smiles. “Yeah, I bet she is. She’s a smart one, that Natasha.”

Shanta wanders in then, racing up to Beth and tapping her on the shoulder. 

“Dad says if we get ready quick, we can get ice cream!” she says excitedly, slowly making the sign for ‘ice cream’.

_Yes!_ Beth signs back, flapping her hands excitedly. She looks up at Clint, who nods. The girls scurry back down the hallway to their bedroom.

“So they’re getting along,” Tony says, and Clint laughs.

“Oh yeah,” he says, staring fondly after them. “I asked Shanta if she wanted us to have our own floor so she could keep her room, and she said ‘Absolutely not.’ They’ve known each other a week and it’s like they were raised together.”

Tony chuckles. “Guess Shanta doesn’t get many friends that close to her age, huh.”

“Not really, no.”

Tony almost wants to mention Astrid, to tell Clint about how excited she’d been for that first birthday party, but he bites his tongue. Just because Bruce had believed him about Loki, he didn’t need to go telling all the other Avengers.

And Clint has more reason to distrust Loki than most.

Bruce reappears in the doorway, flanked by Beth and Shanta, both energized by the prospect of ice cream. “Relax,” he says, motioning for Beth to settle down. “Say goodbye to Uncle Tony and then we’ll go.”

“Can’t Tony come with us?” Shanta says, tugging at Bruce’s sleeve.

Bruce shoots him an apologetic smile. “Tony has things to do,” he says to Shanta.

“We’ll do something soon, kiddo,” Tony assures her, and she beams.

_Bye_, Beth signs, and then, experimentally, she forms her hands into two T handshapes and twists her fists in front of her—the sign for ‘make’.

Clint had told them about name signs, and now it seems Beth has given Tony his.

“Bye Tony,” Shanta calls out, waving as he steps onto the elevator.

—

Shortly after Clint and Beth move in, they receive word that SHIELD has collapsed entirely, and Natasha shows up almost immediately in search of a place to lie low. She debriefs Tony and Bruce on the whole HYDRA situation, and Tony offers her the floor above Bruce’s, no questions asked. He probably owes her a hell of a lot more than that for saving every single person in the tower from an aerial attack by literal Nazis.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Steve is, in Natasha’s words, “too busy chasing down his frozen assassin boyfriend” (which gets Tony wondering if there are any heterosexual Avengers to speak of) to actually move into the tower, but he does pop back periodically to visit Natasha and report on new HYDRA intel. He brings along his new sidekick once in a while, and Tony decides he likes Sam well enough. He seems like he’s keeping Steve in line, which can’t be a bad thing. Natasha sets up a base of operations on one of the common floors for them to track down HYDRA bases, and it’s like the Avengers have reassembled.

All except Thor, of course. Which is probably a blessing in disguise.

Keeping Loki and Astrid away from everyone isn’t hard. The other Avengers don’t tend to question the existence of floors they can’t access, given that Stark Industries trade secrets are all over the place and not a single one of them has clearance. And while Loki occasionally shows signs of going a bit stir-crazy after being confined to the 29th floor for months, he’s keeping himself occupied and doesn’t feel the need to leave. But Tony finds it more and more difficult to justify spending long periods of time away from the others, especially as team dinners and movie nights become a near-daily occurrence. He can’t exactly make up a good excuse for turning down takeout burgers and _Die Hard_ with his fellow Avengers without looking like an asshole. And it’s not like he doesn’t enjoy the team bonding—he just can’t quite shake the thought of Loki eating alone with Astrid just a few floors above them.

“Okay, so Cap’s here this time, he gets to pick the movie.” Natasha’s voice pulls Tony back to the present. Surprising all of them, it had actually been Natasha who had first encouraged the whole team-bonding thing. After she’d all but dragged Tony out of the workshop to join the other residents of the tower in sharing copious amounts of Chinese takeout with _Black Mirror_ playing in the background, they’d all sort of recognized her as their unofficial one-woman event planning committee. She managed to convince Steve to take a night off for once, so here they were, relaxing in the communal living room with burgers and beer.

Tony takes a bite of the giant hunk of grease in his hand as Steve laughs. “Oh, none of you are gonna like what I pick.” He grins at Tony, and Tony smiles back. Really, he doesn’t have a problem with old movies, but he does like making fun of Steve.

“Seriously, Cap, you need to work on catching up. There’s been a whole lot of good film since _Gone With The Wind_.”

They end up watching _Get Smart_, which is technically Natasha’s choice, but Steve defers to her when it comes to what he’s missed in 70 years of pop culture. Tony questions the validity of including a campy spy movie on that list, but he doesn’t complain this time. Besides, it’s actually kind of funny.

Most of the team is asleep by the end of the film—they’ve been working their asses off all day—and if it weren’t for his racing thoughts, Tony might be joining them. As it is, he and Clint are the only ones left awake by the time the credits roll. Bruce is passed out in Clint’s lap, and Tony has trouble fighting back a smile. Clint might be a little shit and not at all his first choice of a partner for his Science Bro, but they do look like they’re good together.

“How are the kids?” Tony asks, trying to make polite conversation.

Clint smiles. “Oh, they’re great. Shanta loves Beth. She’s getting really good at signing.”

“Good for her,” Tony says sincerely. “That’s, what, six languages she can speak now? Or sign, I guess.”

“Sounds about right.“ Clint laughs. “Probably the only good thing about growing up with SHIELD.”

They sit in silence for a moment, Tony wondering if he should try to sleep here or sneak off to the penthouse, when Clint interrupts his thoughts.

“Bruce wants us all to have dinner. With the kids. Sort of a team-bonding-meets-family-togetherness type deal.”

That doesn’t sound like a bad idea, actually. “Sure, why not?” Tony says, wondering if there’s a catch.

Clint’s quiet for a moment.

“I’m just worried for them,” he says finally. “Shanta’s 10, a former spy, and most of her friends are in their 40s. Beth’s transferring schools _and_ homes, and most of you guys can’t even talk to her yet.” He sighs. “I don’t want them to be robbed of a childhood by growing up with the Avengers.”

Tony gets that. He does. His kid might be only a year old, but he’s been worried about how she’s going to grow up here ever since she arrived. Still, he can’t quite tell Clint that. And he wouldn’t have been so adamant that Clint move in if he didn’t think it was good for all of them.

“They’ve both got dads who love them,” he says instead, “and a house full of superheroes who are basically the coolest uncles ever. Plus Natasha for all the little-girl stuff.” He gives Clint a genuine smile. “Between the five of us, I think they’ll be fine.“

“You think the communal living thing is a good idea?”

Honestly, Tony would love to have the rest of the Avengers involved in raising Astrid. At least she’d have people who cared about her that weren’t being paid to do so.

“It’s a hell of a lot better than fumbling in the dark by yourself,” he decides. Clint can’t argue with that.

—

The Avengers’ next team dinner features Shanta and Beth as the guests of honor. Clint prepares an amazing spaghetti carbonara for all of them, complete with garlic bread and a dessert course of white chocolate cheesecake. Tony thinks he could get used to living with so many fantastic chefs, but that thought gets him thinking about Loki, wondering what he’s whipped up for Astrid while Tony is upstairs partying with the Avengers, and he is so not about to spend a team dinner moping over a literal supervillain, so he downs a glass of scotch while Bruce isn’t looking and does his damndest to focus on the people who are actually in the room with him.

Steve is back, and that might be a new record for time spent away from his quest to find Bucky. Thor’s there, too, which is really an impressive feat on Clint’s part. The big guy is notoriously difficult to get ahold of, but he does tend to become the life of the party, so it’s always great to have him around. His Allspeak apparently allows him to understand and use signs as well, so he communicates easily with Beth and occasionally helps Clint in interpreting for the rest of them when their thoughts get ahead of their hands. Steve’s falcon friend is the only one missing, which is really fine by Tony. He’s already got Clint here, and that’s enough bird jokes for one penthouse.

“Come on, Stark, why the long face?”

Speak of the devil. Clint sidles up to him in the kitchen just as he’s pouring a second glass. Damn those SHIELD agents and their silent approaches.

“Dunno what you’re talking about.” He takes a probably-too-large swig, not really making much of an effort to lie. Clint’s better than a polygraph even on a bad day.

“Miss your little girl?” Clint guesses.

Tony nearly chokes on his scotch.

“You—what—”

He doesn’t even try to bullshit his way around it. He knew Clint was good, but this is a whole new level. Is Tony just exuding some kind of new-dad aura that everyone can read except him?

Clint just laughs. “Bruce told me. He figured it was best to rip the band-aid off before I moved in here.”

Well that explains it. It’s a fair point, but still. Bruce could’ve asked Tony before spilling his secrets to Clint of all people.

“He told you what, exactly?” Tony asks cautiously.

“All of it,” Clint says, his voice lowering. “Astrid, Loki, that birthday party you guys had.”

Tony nods, feeling like his heart might stop beating at any second.

“Look, I’m not mad. Promise.” Tony must look skeptical, because Clint raises his hands in surrender. “I work with Natasha. You think I’ve never heard of someone fucking their way out of a bad situation?”

That’s also a fair point. Natasha knows exactly what went down that day in the tower, and she hasn’t judged him for it yet. But still…

“You’re not mad that he’s here?”

Clint pauses for a worryingly long time.

“Bruce said you think there was mind control going on,” he says carefully. “Like what happened with me.”

“We think so, yeah.” Tony studies him as best he can, but SHIELD agents are really good at hiding their emotions.

Clint nods. “Well, I killed plenty of people while that scepter was in my head, and I still live here.” He gives Tony a look that isn’t at all readable. “We don’t judge people on their worst mistakes.”

Tony understands that, at least.

Clint cracks a smile. “So,” he says, pausing to take a sip of his beer. “When’s the wedding? You gonna make an honest woman out of Loki?”

Rather than taking the bait, Tony squares up to him. “You plan to do the same for Bruce?“

Clint doesn’t get a chance to respond before Tony feels a heavy clap on his shoulder that can only be Thor. He hasn’t quite mastered stealth in the way that Clint and Natasha have, but Tony had been so shocked by the entire exchange that he didn’t even notice the approach.

“Tony Stark,” Thor shouts in greeting. “Why are you hiding in the kitchen? Agent Barton has prepared a wonderful dessert!”

“Just picking up a drink,” Tony replies, narrowing his eyes at Clint, whose increasingly amused smirk can’t possibly mean anything good.

“Yeah, we’ll be back, buddy. Don’t worry about us.” Clint glances briefly at Thor, still wearing that shit-eating grin.

Thor gives him a thumbs-up. Bless him.

“Dare I ask what you’re smiling about?” Tony whispers drily once Thor is out of earshot.

“Oh, nothing. Just that you can give me that shovel speech I know you’ve been rehearsing for months.” He takes a few swaggering steps backwards, nodding towards Thor. “But I think you’re in for one of your own, and it’s gonna be one for the books.”

Thankfully for him, Clint saunters back to the table before Tony has the chance to process what that means.


	10. I’m addicted to madness but what can I say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So how bout that Loki trailer, huh?

The arrival of the Avengers to Stark Tower means that Loki once again finds himself living alone, confined to the 29th floor in solitude with only Astrid for company.

She’s getting bigger now, able to crawl quite fast and nearly slip out of Loki’s grasp every time they get close to the floor. Keeping her occupied becomes more and more difficult, and Loki finds himself angry with Stark for not being around to help.

And maybe a little upset that Stark isn’t around in general.

Even aside from his usefulness as a co-parent, Loki has been surprised to find that Stark is actually somewhat enjoyable to have around. He’d gotten a glimpse of it while they’d been in the lab testing his magic, but Stark’s mind works very similarly to Loki’s, and his curiosity knows no bounds. He’ll talk for hours about how he thinks magic works, using words like _wave_ and _ionizing_ that Loki has no way of understanding but that, when strung together, sound like Stark might be onto something. He regards magic not with disdain or a sense of superiority, but as a puzzle to be solved—as something that his science _could_ understand, it just hasn’t bothered to yet.

Loki can’t get enough of it.

When this is over, when Thanos is defeated and Loki can use his gifts freely without fear, he wants to show Tony everything, to make him see that magic isn’t something to be feared or scoffed at, but to be _explored_, to manipulate and examine and seek to understand. Loki knows this well. Tony, he thinks, could learn to believe it.

But that gets his thoughts running down a path he doesn’t want to consider.

Because he isn’t safe. He can’t use his magic at all, let alone to open Stark’s mind. Thanos is still out there, and he’s still a threat to both Loki and Astrid—and now, probably, Stark as well.

And now that the Avengers have returned, Stark isn’t even around to talk to, let alone examine the inner workings of Loki’s dormant seiðr. Assuming he would want to anyway.

Loki sets up his tablet in the kitchen to prepare yet another meal for two. Stark is busy downstairs, eating with Bruce and Captain Rogers and _Thor_, of all people. Even Stark finds his brother’s company preferable. It shouldn’t surprise him, but it still hurts.

“What shall we have tonight, darling?”

He knows Astrid can’t answer, but she’s a better conversational partner than JARVIS, and he’ll quickly go crazy if he has no one to talk to. As he usually does when having unpleasant thoughts, Loki busies himself, browsing on his tablet in search of a recipe.

“How about…potato soup? Does that sound good?”

“Soo,” Astrid replies, and Loki beams.

“Excellent,” he says, and turns to the fridge. “I think we’ll be fine by ourselves then, yes?”

—

Over the next few weeks, whenever Tony manages to visit Loki, he finds him increasingly sullen and withdrawn.

Tony suspects that he’s upset about the Avengers moving in, but he can’t tell if it’s because he’s wary about them or because he misses having Tony’s help with Astrid. Whatever the reason is, Loki’s pissed, and he isn’t giving Tony anything that even remotely resembles an explanation.

“Okay, Oscar the Grouch,” Tony says one night over a dinner that Loki had prepared and served in complete silence. He tosses down his fork and crosses his arms, staring Loki down. “What’s crawled up your ass?”

Loki doesn’t react. “Are you going to finish your dinner?” he says instead, not looking up from his plate.

“Not until you tell me what’s wrong with you.”

Loki falters, but he still doesn’t look up. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit. ‘Scuse my French.” He glances quickly at Astrid, who smiles innocently back at him. Thankfully, she’s still too young to repeat swears. Tony sighs, resting both arms on the table. “You’ve been bitter ever since Clint moved in. What’s going on?”

Loki, infuriatingly, doesn’t respond.

“Is it because they’re here? Is that it? Avengers reassembled bringing back bad memories?” He does his best to make eye contact, and Loki does his best to avoid it. “Or you’re pissed that I’m not around anymore? Which, by the way, I wish I could help, but I can’t exactly tell them that I’m missing team dinner every night to go have risotto with my infant daughter and Thor’s little brother.”

Loki’s grip on his fork tightens, but he still doesn’t speak.

“Just talk to me. If there’s anything I can do…”

He studies Loki for a moment.

“Loki, are you happy here?”

That seems to catch him off guard. He looks up, finally meeting Tony’s eyes with a quizzical expression.

“What?”

“You’re not a prisoner,” Tony continues. “You live here, like it or not. And, well, it’s my tower, and I generally like the people who live in my tower to be happy here, so.”

Loki blinks. He looks at Tony as if he’s lost his mind. Then, after a silence that goes on for far too long, he drops his gaze, pushing some food around on his plate.

“I don’t think I’ve been happy anywhere for a long time,” he says quietly. The sudden admission gets Tony thinking.

Loki has, from what Tony knows, been passed over for the throne in favor of his brother, informed that he’s actually not even the same species as his family, forced into what basically amounts to slavery by some all-powerful bad guy who wants to destroy the universe, and is now stranded alone on an unfamiliar planet with a bastard halfling child to care for. Suddenly, Tony understands. Loki’s a stranger in a strange land, homesick for a place that doesn’t want him back. He’s a wanted criminal on two planets and a disobedient runaway everywhere else. He’s cut off from the main source of his power, unable to use the one gift he’s actually good at. And now the only friend he’d had on Earth is ditching him for movie nights with the team of superheroes who absolutely humiliated him, including his golden-boy big brother.

All that, and it’s no wonder he’s pissed off.

As if on instinct, Tony reaches across the table and sets his hand on Loki’s. He looks up, surprised, but with something in his eyes that looks a little like gratitude. Tony’s not sure what to say. _Everything’s gonna be okay_ is way too trite. _Asgard didn’t deserve you_ is too on-the-nose, and _You’re way cooler than Thor_ sounds like a lie, even if it’s not. _I’m sorry your life sucks_ seems like it’d piss him off more.

“I still owe you a drink,” Tony says instead.

To his surprise, Loki actually laughs.

“You’re still set on that,” he mutters, almost fondly. Tony grins.

“Of course.” His mind made up, he gets to his feet. “Come on. Put Astrid to bed, and let’s have a drink.”

Loki considers it for a long moment, then nods. “Why not,” he agrees, setting down his fork.

“What do you drink?”

“Wine,” Loki says, still smiling faintly as he clears their dinner dishes. “Red wine.”

Tony stares at him for a moment, incredulous. Why is he not surprised?

—

As it turns out, it takes approximately 17 glasses of Earth wine to get an Asgardian drunk.

Tony’s only on his third glass of scotch, feeling a pleasant buzz but nowhere near as drunk as Loki. He clearly needed it, too, because he’s more relaxed than Tony’s ever seen him, stretched across the couch with his head in Tony’s lap. He also hasn’t stopped talking in at least ten minutes.

“Magic was always Mother’s talent,” he says, slurring a little bit, taking a sloppy drink out of the side of his mouth. “Father didn’t respect the art.”

“Well that’s dumb.” Tony takes a swig of scotch. “Magic is cool as hell.”

Loki just shakes his head. ”He prefers more direct confrontation. Fighting like a warrior. Like a _man_.”

Tony snorts. “Sounds familiar,” he mutters.

“Oh, so Midgard is the same? Good to know.”

“Well, not all of it. But I grew up with a war profiteer for a father.” He shoots Loki a wry look. “Creation for creation’s sake wasn’t really how he operated."

“He preferred destruction,” Loki agrees. Tony realizes belatedly that he’s been stroking Loki’s hair.

“Absolutely. I think if he saw what I’ve done with the company he’d shit himself.”

Loki laughs, a genuine, throaty sound, and Tony can’t help but smile. “Good for you,” Loki says. He holds up his glass for a toast, nearly spilling wine all over Tony’s lap. Tony taps it with his own.

“Fuck yeah,” he agrees. “Stick it to the man.”

Loki shakes his head. “I doubt I’ll ever get that chance.”

It’s quiet for a moment, with Tony unsure what to say in response. Loki doesn’t give him a chance.

“I have a question,” he says after a moment.

Tony blinks. Loki takes another long swig of wine. When he doesn’t elaborate, Tony offers, “I might have an answer, then.”

Loki pauses, staring intently at his glass of wine as he swirls it in front of him. “When we met, in your tower,” he begins, clearly choosing his words carefully. “You remarked that you…had no objection to my current form.” He looks up, finally meeting Tony’s eyes. “Was that true?”

Tony blanches. This is the first time either one of them has mentioned their hook-up directly.

“What I mean to ask,” Loki adds almost immediately, apparently sensing Tony’s discomfort. “I was under the impression that Midgardians tended to be more…restrictive in their choice of partners.”

Oh.

“You’re asking if I’m into men.” Loki nods, expression serious, and Tony laughs nervously. “Uh, well, yeah. I mean, sometimes.”

Loki doesn’t answer, but he looks curious, as if hoping Tony will explain.

“It’s…not like that’s something I broadcast to the public,” he says darkly. “Midgardians do have their hangups.”

Shit, did he really just say _Midgardians?_

“Yes, your _exclusive_ ventures with women are well documented,” Loki notes with a hint of a smile, which he attempts to hide by taking a sip of wine. Tony shrugs.

“Yeah, well, that’s intentional,” he says, taking a sip of his scotch. “Part of the public image.”

That seems to get Loki’s attention. “Is that so?” he asks, genuinely curious.

“It’s how my dad was,” Tony explains dismissively. Suddenly he’s not so interested in this conversation anymore. “Everyone kind of expected it of me. And hey, when women are basically throwing themselves at you from the moment you turn 18, well…I wasn’t exactly gonna say no.”

Loki chuckles. “Yes, that does not appear to be one of your strong suits.”

Tony decides to ignore that. Thankfully, Loki lets him.

“I presume your encounters with men were kept more…private?”

“While dad and Obie were still alive I didn’t even think about it.” He prays that Loki won’t ask for more details on that—he’s nowhere near drunk enough to get into his issues with Howard and Obadiah. “Now it’s more of a…once in a while sort of thing. Always in private. Super discreet. Never more than a night or two.”

Loki nods, sipping his wine thoughtfully. Tony can’t begin to imagine what he’s thinking.

“Asgard is similar,” he says, which surprises Tony.

“I always thought Vikings were kind of an anything-that-moves type of people?”

That actually gets a laugh out of Loki. “Sexually? Most definitely. But Asgard is a warrior’s culture. There are roles for men and roles for women, and while there are some who would break those rules, many others would take issue.” He pauses for a moment before adding, “The House of Odin would not take kindly to having a prince who is also a mother.”

Loki’s gender is another elephant in the room that Tony’s avoided pushing him on, but if Loki’s trying to lay everything out under the excuse of a lot of wine, then Tony’s going to let him.

“I guess your shapeshifting wouldn’t exactly be highly regarded there, would it?”

Loki scoffs. “Certainly not. A woman’s art performed by a future king, meant to transform him into a queen?” His face falters, and then he adds, “Well. Not with my blood.”

“Is that why you left?”

It’s a loaded question and he knows it. There’s a long silence, and Tony is about to say forget it, let’s talk about something else, when Loki speaks.

“My world was crumbling around me.” He gulps down the last of his wine and lets the glass fall to the floor. It’s carpeted, so it’s fine. “That’s what it felt like, at least. I was taught that I was meant for the throne. It was my birthright. But that was all a lie.” Loki closes his eyes, a pained expression pinching his features. “It was only when I was hanging from the rainbow bridge that I realized that nothing I did could please him. As my father and my king, his approval was quite literally everything to me.” He takes a deep, shaky breath. “So I let go.”

Tony had suspected that Loki’s “death” back on Asgard had been a suicide attempt, but something about hearing it from him makes it all click into place.

“But you survived,” he says quietly. Loki scoffs.

“If you can call it that.”

Loki looks like he’s trying not to cry, and Tony wants to let him know that it’s okay, he won’t be judged or ridiculed for it here. But he also knows that Loki is usually very guarded, and if it took 18 glasses of wine to get him to open up like this, it could only take one misstep for him to clam up again. So Tony says nothing, just keeps stroking his hair, because that at least seems to be calming him.

“I don’t belong anywhere,” Loki says, his voice barely a whisper.

“That’s a pretty bold statement,” Tony replies before he can stop himself. “I mean, come on. The universe is huge. Maybe you just haven’t found where you belong yet.”

Loki stares at him for a long time, and Tony is suddenly painfully aware of how _intimate_ this all is.

“Maybe,” he concedes with a small yawn. Before Tony can help him up, his eyes are slipping shut, and Tony decides they can sleep here for the night if that’s what Loki wants.

He keeps stroking his hair as Loki drifts off, cheek pressed into Tony’s thigh.

—

Loki wakes up a few hours later with his head in Tony’s lap, not entirely rested but suddenly wide awake.

Last night had been…somewhere between therapeutic and embarrassingly revealing, he thinks. He has always had trouble shutting up when drunk, and now not only has he told Tony far too much about his father, but he’d mentioned their past affair, something they’d seemed to have an unspoken agreement not to do.

Still, from what his drunken mind could discern, Tony hadn’t seemed displeased, or even piteous. He had seemed to understand Loki in a way that few others ever had. Of course, it’s also possible that Tony had just been humoring Loki while he’d been drunk, and now plans to make his retreat as soon as he’s sober himself. Loki isn’t sure he’s ready to know the truth in that regard.

He can’t help but feel like they’ve crossed a line somewhere, but try as he might he can’t put his finger on where it was drawn, or which one of them drew it in the first place.

Loki hears Astrid fussing in the bedroom, so he pushes the thought of Tony out of his mind and goes to tend to his daughter.

She’s hungry, no doubt, but now that he’s no longer breastfeeding she’ll have to wait a bit longer for breakfast. He picks her up out of her crib and whispers soothing words as he carries her out into the kitchen.

Alone, bored, and a little anxious, he spends most of the morning cooking. He makes scrambled eggs for Astrid, which she gladly eats once they’re slathered with ketchup, and then he keeps making eggs in every way he can find a recipe for. He fries up a pan of bacon as well, which tastes like home in a way he doesn’t particularly like. Loki prefers Midgardian breakfasts like pancakes or French toast, but he knows Tony is big on bacon, so that’s what he’s making for today. He also brews a pot of coffee with no plans to drink any, and he tries very hard not to think about that too much.

He’s on his sixth attempt at eggs when Tony comes stumbling into the kitchen, squinting against the light.

“Morning,” Loki says, an amused smile creeping onto his face. He isn’t running. That’s a good sign.

Tony goes straight for the coffee pot, which he looks surprised to find full, with a mug sitting out for him.

“JARVIS told me you like it black,” Loki offers, and Tony blinks.

“Thanks,” he says hesitantly, pouring himself a mug and stumbling back to the table.

“Nee,” says Astrid. She doesn’t have a particular name for her father yet, but Loki has been trying to teach her to say _Tony_ whenever they’re alone. She’s…working on it.

“Can you say _dad?_” Tony tries, and Astrid giggles but doesn’t make any further attempt at speaking.

“She obviously likes me best,” Loki quips. Testing the waters.

“Well, maybe when you had boobs,” Tony shoots back, “but now it’s anyone’s game.”

Loki snorts. “Yes, the two of you have that in common.”

He can’t help it, really, not when he’s given such a perfect setup. It feels like they’re alright, like they’ve settled back into their usual banter without any hurt feelings. But Tony responds not with a witty remark, but a confused stare, and Loki wonders if perhaps he’d crossed another line.

“Breakfast,” he announces before Tony can say anything, setting down the plate of eggs and bacon.

“Bless you,” Tony groans, forgetting all about Loki’s comment as he grabs a handful of bacon with his bare hand. Loki chuckles. He sits down across the table, taking a forkful of eggs directly off of the serving plate. He takes a deep breath, silently begging his heart to stop racing.

Maybe things will work out after all.

“Ma. Mama ma. Mama.”

Tony flashes Astrid a tired grin.

“Sleep well, kiddo?”

Astrid responds by tossing a spoonful of eggs onto the floor. Loki doesn’t say anything, just sighs and bends down to clean it up.

“That wasn’t nice,” Tony informs Astrid. She just giggles.

They eat breakfast in a silence that isn’t quite awkward, but isn’t totally comfortable either. Loki sneaks glances at Tony throughout the meal, searching for any other signs that he’s about to run for the hills after last night. He doesn’t find any. But before he can truly get a read on the situation, their meal is interrupted by JARVIS.

“Sir, Agent Romanov is looking for you.”

Tony groans. “Great, thanks, J.” He looks apologetically at Loki, who just waves his hand.

“Duty calls,” he says flippantly, trying not to look disappointed.

“I wish duty would wait until after breakfast.” That gets a smile out of Loki, if a reluctant one.

“Should I be expecting you at dinner?” he asks before he can stop himself.

Tony sighs. “Honestly, probably not. If Natasha is asking for me it’s probably serious.”

Loki nods, his expression carefully neutral. “Well. Try not to blow up the city.”

“Will do,” Tony says with a mock salute. Loki watches him go, a wistful longing forcing itself on him even as he tries to tell himself that he doesn’t care where Stark goes or how long he’s gone.

Lying to himself is getting harder by the day.


End file.
